Karel Schwarzenberg was a Czech politician, Minister of Foreign Affairs, co-founder and chairman of TOP 09. In exile he devoted himself to human rights, and after returning in 1989 he served as Chancellor to the President.
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Karel Schwarzenberg was a Czech politician, Minister of Foreign Affairs and chairman of the party TOP 09. He was born on 10 December 1937 in Bubeneč, Prague, as the eldest son of Karel Schwarzenberg and his wife Antonie[1].
Youth and exile
In 1948 he had to leave Czechoslovakia and seek refuge abroad. He studied law in Vienna and Graz and forestry in Munich. He interrupted his studies because his adoptive father Jindřich Schwarzenberg died soon afterwards and he took over the management of the family estates in Austria and Bavaria[1].
Human rights in the 1980s
In the 1980s he headed the International Helsinki Committee for Human Rights and promoted the observance of human rights in Europe. He discussed them, among other places, in the then USSR, in Bulgaria, in Kosovo and in Czechoslovakia. At the Bavarian family residence he founded, together with Vilém Prečan, the Czechoslovak Documentation Centre to support exiles and dissent, an archive of then banned literature. The collection is now part of the National Museum and is kept in Prague[1].
Return and political career
In autumn 1989 he returned to his homeland, and on 10 July 1990 he was appointed Chancellor to the President. In 1992 he led the first OSCE delegation to Nagorno-Karabakh after war broke out between Armenia and Azerbaijan. He left the post of chancellor in 1992 in connection with Havel's abdication[1].
From 1992 to 2004 he administered the family firm, above all forestry and the care of the monuments entrusted to it, and served in a number of foundations, committees and societies. In the 2002 Senate elections in the Strakonice area he was unsuccessful; in November 2004 he was elected senator for the Prague 6 constituency, nominated by US-DEU and ODA[1].
He was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs on 9 January 2007 as a nominee of the Green Party. In that office, on 8 July 2008, he signed with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice an agreement on placing a US radar on military territory in Brdy. In June 2009 he founded the party TOP 09 together with Miroslav Kalousek, and at its founding congress on 27 and 28 November 2009 he was elected chairman. Since 13 July 2010, according to an archived government page, he has been Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs[1].
The last farewell
The family held a public farewell in December 2023 in the grounds of the Czech Grand Priory of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta in Lázeňská Street in Malá Strana, specifically in the Church of Our Lady beneath the Chain. Schwarzenberg was a member of this order. The closed coffin was open to the public from 6 to 8 December, daily from noon to ten in the evening, and a guard of honour was kept by scouts and soldiers. A funeral with state honours was then held in the cathedral at Prague Castle[2].
According to the order, among his last wishes was that instead of flowers people contribute to the charitable activity of the grand priory and to aid for war-stricken Ukraine. According to its text, the Schwarzenberg family has been bound to the order since its arrival in the Czech lands in 1650. Karel Schwarzenberg's father received in 1959 the title of president of the regency council of the Czech grand priory and strengthened the order with new members in exile[2].