Masaryk, who had previously studied in Vienna and Leipzig and later taught as Privat-Dozent at Vienna University, accepted his appointment as lecturer at the Czech university in Prague in 1882 somewhat unwillingly and even with distaste. As he said many years later, he feared the provincialism of Prague; he felt himself a foreigner amongst Czechs and estranged from their national life. His Czech was rather rudimentary; he was unacquainted with the literature of the country and had misgivings about the situation of Czech literature and philosophy.
