Václav Havel at the conference Freedom and Its Adversaries in Prague, 14 November 2009
Václav Havel at the conference Freedom and Its Adversaries in Prague, 14 November 2009Photo: Ondřej Sláma, 2009 · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Václav Havel (1936–2011) was a Czech playwright, essayist and politician. He was President of Czechoslovakia from 1989 to 1992 and the first President of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003.[4] He was one of the co-authors of Charter 77 and one of its first three spokesmen.[3] He was born in Prague on 5 October 1936.[1] 5 October 2026 marks the 90th anniversary of his birth.[6]*

Youth and studies

After the communist takeover of 1948 he was barred from studying humanities for reasons of class background. In 1953 he trained as a chemical laboratory technician and in 1954 obtained his school-leaving certificate through evening classes while working.[1] He studied at the economics faculty of the Czech Technical University in Prague; he was not admitted to the film faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts.[1] In 1956 he gave a critical address at a meeting of young authors at Dobříš.[1]

Theatre

From 1959 he worked as a stagehand at the ABC Theatre and from 1960 at the Theatre on the Balustrade (Divadlo Na zábradlí), where he later became dramaturge and assistant director.[2] The Theatre on the Balustrade staged his play The Garden Party on 3 December 1963, directed by Otomar Krejča, and The Memorandum in 1965, directed by Jan Grossman.[2] The Garden Party also had its German premiere in West Berlin in October 1964.[2] His first book, the collection Protokoly, appeared in 1966, and in the same year he completed distance studies in dramaturgy at DAMU.[2] In 1967 he spoke on freedom of creative work at the Fourth Congress of the Czechoslovak Writers' Union.[2] In the summer of 1968 he left the Theatre on the Balustrade and continued as a freelance writer. During the August 1968 occupation he wrote statements in Liberec for broadcast by Czechoslovak Radio.[2]

Dissent

At the beginning of normalisation he became a banned author. His plays were not performed in Czechoslovakia; according to the Václav Havel Library they had more than 300 premieres abroad.[3] In 1974–1975 he worked as a labourer at the Trutnov brewery, an experience he used in the play Audience (1975).[3] On 8 April 1975 he wrote an open letter to Gustáv Husák, and at the end of that year he founded the samizdat imprint Edice Expedice.[3] Charter 77 was published on 6 January 1977. Havel co-wrote its text and was one of its first spokesmen.[3] On 27 April 1978 he co-founded the Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Prosecuted (VONS), and in October 1978 he wrote the essay The Power of the Powerless.[3]

In May 1979 he was imprisoned together with other members of VONS. In October 1979 he was given a sentence of four and a half years for "subversion of the republic". The sentence was interrupted on health grounds in 1983.[3] The letters he wrote during that time became the book Letters to Olga.[3] In 1984 and 1985 he wrote the plays Largo desolato and Temptation, and in 1986 he completed Disturbing the Peace, a book-length interview with Karel Hvížďala.[3] In the 1980s he received awards abroad including the Erasmus Prize and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.[3] In January 1989, after protests on Wenceslas Square marking the anniversary of Jan Palach's death, he was imprisoned again and given a nine-month sentence. He was released in May 1989 and immediately co-initiated the petition A Few Sentences.[3]

President

In November 1989 he became the leading figure of the Civic Forum.[4] On 29 December 1989 the deputies of the Federal Assembly elected him president in the Vladislav Hall of Prague Castle.[5] After the first free elections he was elected President of the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic on 5 July 1990.[5] On 21 February 1990 he addressed both houses of the United States Congress, and on 21 March 1991 he became the first president from a country behind the former Iron Curtain to speak at the North Atlantic Alliance headquarters in Brussels.[4] According to the Václav Havel Library, his initiative led to the meeting of the leaders of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland in Bratislava on 9 April 1990, from which Visegrád cooperation emerged. On 1 July 1991 he announced in Prague the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact.[4] He resigned as President of Czechoslovakia on 20 July 1992.[4][5]

On 26 January 1993 he was elected the first President of the Czech Republic and was re-elected on 20 January 1998.[4] In 1996 he founded the Forum 2000 project with Elie Wiesel and Yohei Sasakawa; its first international conference was held in 1997. The Czech Republic joined NATO on 12 March 1999.[4] His second term ended on 2 February 2003.[4]

After 2003

After leaving office he returned to writing. His play Leaving premiered on 22 May 2008 at the Archa Theatre, and he directed a film of the same name based on it, released on 22 March 2011.[4] He died on 18 December 2011 at Hrádeček.[6] In 2012 the Parliament of the Czech Republic passed a law consisting of a single sentence: "Václav Havel deserved well of freedom and democracy."[4]

Commemoration

The anniversary of his birth was marked on 21 September 2026 by a day-long programme on Mariánské náměstí in Prague with debates, readings from Havel's works and a concert. It included the unveiling of a Václav Havel Bench and the panel exhibition Václav Havel's Prague, prepared with the Václav Havel Library, which presents places connected with his life in 18 stops.[6]

Chronology

  • — Dagmar Havlová announced that the Prague City Library is taking over the management of Václav Havel's legacy and unveiled the Václav Havel Bench on Mariánské náměstí, opening the celebrations of the 90th anniversary of his birth. → Seznam Zprávy Hospodářské noviny

Pages linking here

Sources

  1. Knihovna Václava Havla
  2. Knihovna Václava Havla
  3. Knihovna Václava Havla
  4. Knihovna Václava Havla
  5. ČT24 — 4 July 2010
  6. ČTK (České noviny) — 21 September 2026