Alois Rašín

(18 October 1867 Nechanice – 18 February 1923 Prague)

Rašín graduated from the Faculty of Law at the Czech Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague. He was active in politics while still at university and became one of the leaders of the student progressivist movement. In 1894, he was arrested and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in a show trial against the Omladina youth movement. In 1899, he co-founded the Czech Constitutional Party and later, in 1907, he joined the National Liberal Party (also known as the Young Czech Party) and was elected to the Imperial Council in 1911 as its representative. After the outbreak of World War I, he joined the Maffie organisation and, as one of the leading figures of the anti-Austrian resistance, he was arrested and, in June 1916, sentenced to death for treason and espionage. In January 1917, the sentence was commuted to ten years’ imprisonment and he was later granted an amnesty. After his release, he became involved in Czech politics again, helped establish the Czech Constitutional Democratic Party (later the Czechoslovak National Democratic Party) and, most importantly, as a member of the National Committee took part in the preparations for the establishment of the new nation.

As a member of the presidium of the National Committee, Rašín was among the organisers of the anti-Austrian coup d’état on 28 October 1918 and prepared the first law of the Czechoslovak state. He served as Minister of Finance in the first Czechoslovak government. In this post, he initiated the creation of the Czechoslovak currency, to which he gave a sound and solid foundation through his deflationary policy. On 5 January 1923, during his second mandate as minister, an attempt was made on his life and he died from his injuries a month later.

Alois Rašín started to engage actively in national economic affairs during his time in the Imperial Council, where he gained recognition for his fiscal analyses. Before World War I, he also wrote articles on the national economy for the Národní Listy newspaper. Shortly after his arrest in 1915, he began writing his major economic treatise Národní hospodářství (“The National Economy”), which he published in 1922. In it, he explained economic principles – especially those related to money and finance – to the general public in an accessible way, drawing on the ideas of the Austrian school of economics. During his term as minister, he advocated a radical deflationary policy, a balanced budget and government austerity measures. He later developed these ideas into several economic writings, which, together with Národní hospodářství, formed the basis of economic thinking for his intellectual successors.

 

Alois Rašín in a 2025 engraving by Martin Srb (*1954).
Prepared by the State Printing Works of Securities in Prague.

Currency in the age of Alois Rašín

Although the currencies of the Habsburg monarchy were used for most of Rašín’s life, Rašín is regarded as the principal architect of the Czechoslovak currency and the monetary and economic policy of the Czechoslovak state. Under an authorising act of 25 February 1919, prepared by Rašín himself, high-denomination banknotes issued by the Austro-Hungarian Bank were stamped and the Czechoslovak currency was separated from the Austro-Hungarian currency as of 9 March 1919. Under an act of 10 April 1919, the Czechoslovak koruna, made up of 100 hellers, was established as the monetary unit at a ratio of 1:1 to the former Austro-Hungarian crown. Alois Rašín subsequently advocated deflationary principles in his monetary policy, with the aim of achieving a strong and stable koruna.