Beneš’s journey to his first exile

One of the most distinctive organizers of the anti-Austrian resistance movement was Dr. Edvard Beneš. However, in the summer of the second year of the war, the ground below his feet started to become unstable in Bohemia. Beneš decided to cross the border near Aš, because his former classmate MUDr Karel Ammerling served there. Beneš arrived in Aš on 1st September 1915 with a false passport with the name Miroslav Šícha – a travelling salesman with optical instruments. In front of the building of the grammar school, at the time transformed into a field hospital, he met with Ammerling. The transit was successful and Beneš met with T. G. Masaryk in Switzerland on 3rd September 1915. He returned to his homeland in less than four years as a Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czechoslovak republic. In the place, where the future president had crossed the border, a monument was erected on 31st August 1947. However, in the fifties the frontier guard eliminated it. In 1995 the monument was erected again near the building of the grammar school and the place of the memorable crossing is today known as Beneš’s clearing.