Events 2009
President Wilson Monument Will Return to Prague
President Wilson Monument in front of main Praguetrain station. Photo AFoCR
June 23, 2009
A monument to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson will return to a location at the main Prague train station that bears his name. Thanks to the effort of American Friends of the Czech Republic (AFoCR) the memorial, torn down by the Nazis in 1941, is slated to be unveiled in 2010. “The Wilson Memorial in Prague, as the counterpart of the Masaryk Memorial in Washington, will symbolize the long-standing ties of friendship and joint democratic values shared by the American and Czech peoples,” said Robert W. Doubek, AFoCR director and project director for the Wilson Memorial.
The Wilson monument stood in front of Prague’s main railway station from 1928 until 1941, in gratitude for Woodrow Wilson’s crucial role in Czechoslovakia’s independence. It was an 11-foot (3.5-meter) bronze statue depicting Wilson at the Versailles Peace Conference, standing in front of a chair draped with an American flag and holding his hands aloft in what is deemed to be a symbolic Protestant blessing of the new Czechoslovak democracy. The bronze statue stood on a 4.5-meter pedestal on which was written ‘The World Must Be Made Safe for Democracy’ in both Czech and English. The Nazis tore down this monument on the night of December 11th after the United States Congress declared war on Japan.
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Wilson Monument
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The original, larger than life-sized statue was bronze and the base was granite. It was the first statue of an American president in Prague, and it was dedicated on the 4th of July, 1928. For historical and artistic reasons the new statue will be a replica of the original one.
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