Third Defenestration of Prague

Further defenestrations

Sometimes, the name "the fourth" or "the third defenestration of Prague" is used, although it has no standard meaning. For example, it has been used to describe the death of Jan Masaryk, who was found below the bathroom window of the building of the Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 10 March 1948, two weeks after the communist coup. The official report listed the death as a suicide. However, it was widely believed he was murdered, either by the nascent communist government in which he served as a non-partisan foreign minister, or by the Soviet secret services. A Prague police report in 2004 concluded after forensic research that at least one other person was involved in Masaryk's death. This report was seemingly corroborated in 2006 when a Russian journalist said that his mother knew the Russian intelligence officer who defenestrated Masaryk. However, a more recent investigation opened in 2019 again called those findings into question, with new research claiming that Masaryk fell not from the bathroom window, but from the adjacent exterior ledge. That investigation was shelved in 2021, with investigators citing a continuing lack of sufficient evidence to make conclusive determinations regarding the events of Masaryk's death.