Woodrow Wilson - Prague, Czech Republic
Posted by: vraatja
N 50° 05.036 E 014° 25.987
33U E 459444 N 5548117
A statue of the 28th U.S. president Woodrow Wilson in smal park outside Prague's main train station
Waymark Code: WMDR01
Location: Hlavní město Praha, Czechia
Date Posted: 02/17/2012
Published By: 3am
Views: 128
The 3.5-meter tall statue of the 28th U.S. president Woodrow Wilson was unveiled outside Prague's main train station October 5, 2011 to replace the one removed by the Nazis in 1941. At a ceremony attended by many of the country's leading political figures, speakers paid tribute to a man who is credited with playing a key role in creating the first independent Czechoslovak state. President Václav Klaus, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, U.S. Ambassador Norman Eisen, Prague Mayor Bohuslav Svoboda, Prague Archbishop Dominik Duka, American Friends of the Czech Republic (AFoCR) Chairman Fred Malek and former President Václav Havel were all on hand.
Wilson worked with 1st president of Czechoslovakia Tomas G. Masaryk to create a Czechoslovak state after the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I. In May 1918, Masaryk and Wilson signed the Pittsburgh Agreement, calling for a democratic republic of Czechoslovakia, which Wilson then supported at the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference.
The original statue dates to the early 1920s, when Albin Polasek, a Czech-American artist, sculpted Wilson's figure, draped in the American flag and with hands outstretched. He positioned the 14-foot-tall statue in front of an oversized chair with arms he carved to resemble American eagles. The figure was placed atop a granite pedestal, etched with the president's name in bronze and inscribed in English and Czech with Wilson's rationale for entering World War I: "The world must be made safe for democracy." A team of three Czech sculptors has recreated those exact details and dimensions.
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Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856, Staunton, Virginia, U.S.— February 3, 1924, Washington, D.C.) was 28th president of the United States (1913–21), an American scholar and statesman best remembered for his legislative accomplishments and his high-minded idealism. Wilson led his country into World War I and became the creator and leading advocate of the League of Nations, for which he was awarded the 1919 Nobel Prize for Peace. During his second term the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the right to vote, was passed and ratified. He suffered a paralytic stroke while seeking American public support for the Treaty of Versailles (October 1919), and his incapacity, which lasted for the rest of his term of office, caused the worst crisis of presidential disability in American history.