Hubert Ripka

Nationality

Czechoslovakia

Date of Birth

1895

Date of Death

1958

Political
Preference

Hubert Ripka was a Czechoslovakian politician. He was a diplomatic correspondent of the 156 newspaper Lidové Novinyin in the 1930s and an adviser to the Czechoslovakian President Edvard Beneš. Ripka opposed the Munich Agreement, an agreement made in September 1938 between Nazi Germany, the United Kingdom, the French Third Republic, and the Kingdom of Italy to allow Germany’s annexation of the Czechoslovakian Sudetenland.

Ripka moved to France after it was signed and wrote a book condemning the agreement. During the Second World War, he became Secretary of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Czechoslovakian government-in-exile in London. As such, he was intimately involved in the preparation for the creation of a Polish-Czechoslovakian federation after the war. Through the Comité des Ministrès des Affaires Étrangères des Gouvernements allies he also connected to other European statesmen in London.

After the War, Ripka returned to Czechoslovakia and became Minister of Foreign Trade. He was a member of the Czechoslovakian Constituent National Assembly from 1946 to 1948. When the communists took power in 1948, Ripka once again left his country and remained in exile until his death.