Tusar, Vlastimil

Born Oct. 18,1880, in Prague; died Mar. 22,1924, in Berlin. Czech political figure.

From 1900 to 1903, Tusar was secretary of a trade union of workers in commercial trading firms in Prague. From 1903 to 1911 he was an editor, then editor in chief, of the social democratic newspaper Rovnost in Brno. From 1911 to 1918, Tusar served as a deputy to the Reichsrat from the Czech Slavonic Social Democratic Labor Party. During World I, he was secretary of the Czech Union, a coalition of deputies to parliament from the major Czech political parties; in this post he carried out a pro-Austrian policy. After the formation of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918, Tusar headed the government of the Red-Green Coalition, which included right-wing social democrats, socialists, and agrarians. From 1921 to 1924, Tusar served as an envoy in Germany.