“He wanted to start a new religion”: Masaryk’s ambitious plan

Bruce Berglund’s fascinating Castle and Cathedral in Modern Prague, published in Czech in January, focuses on the early years of Czechoslovakia, when President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk was forging the new state. This included making Prague Castle the symbolic heart of the new democracy and, Berglund writes, an ambitious plan for a new religion for the country that TGM founded in 1918. I spoke to the historian from his home in Minnesota.