Milan Rastislav Štefánik was a Slovak politician, diplomat, aviator and astronomer. During World War I, he served at the same time as a general in the French Army and as Minister of War for Czechoslovakia. As one of the leading members of the Czechoslovak National Council (the resistance government), he contributed decisively to the cause of Czechoslovak sovereignty, since the status of Czech- and Slovak-populated territories was one of those in question until shortly before the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1918.
The author of the statue is Czech sculptor Bohumil Kafka, professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. In 1928 Kafka created a statue of Stefanik as an aviator, as Stefanik was returning to the free Czechoslovak Republic in his aviation uniform and as an active aviator he had earned the attention of the French generals. The aviation uniform at that time was a symbol of technical progress in the army.
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