Former Czech President Vaclav Havel dies

From Dissident Poet to President

He was only dissenter, then president, until political prisoners, then moral authority of international standing. He was only a symbolic figure for the resistance against the Communists and then for the democratic change in the Czech Republic. Vaclav Havel, the "poet president", has died at the age of 75.

Political theater of the absurd and daily business: Much contradictory to the contents of a human life to be. That both have many points of contact at times - especially when the system is a communist, Vaclav Havel, in the sixties and seventies proved impressive.
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Vaclav Havel, a European life

Havel was during the communist era of Czechoslovakia (1948-1989) was the key figure in the nonviolent struggle against the regime. In 1989 Havel was one of the representatives of the democratic awakening. The cries of the masses on Prague's Wenceslas Square - "Havel to the Castle" - in 1989 catapulted him into the presidency of the new democratic Czechoslovakia. For four years he was president of the country, then, until 2003, head of state of the newly formed Czech Republic.

The father owned real estate in Prague and a cabaret-restaurant, but was dispossessed soon after the Second World War - because of this "bourgeois" origin Havel was hampered in his training. He's trained as a laboratory assistant, took after high school, studied transport economics. But he could not complete the study because he was - had applied to the Academy of Performing Arts - in vain. Finally he was allowed to study drama, which he graduated in 1966.
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Even as a young man, Havel wrote in the journal Reviews květen (May), soon followed in all the important contributions Czech literary magazines. In 1960 he wrote his first play, the one-act Rodinný večer (family night), but it was first performed in 2000. After a year as a stagehand at the ABC Theatre in Prague, Havel worked from 1960 until the summer of 1968 at the Prague "zábradlí Divadlo na" (Theatre on the railing), first as a stage technician and later as a dramaturge and resident playwright. On the side he was an assistant director at the City Theater Alfred Radok aside.

In December 1963, Havel's play "The Garden Party" premiered two years later, "Notification" - satires which recall the work of French writer Eugene Ionesco. With the resources of the theater of the absurd, he satirises the bureaucracy and the solidification of social life in the repressive era of socialism. The dangers of totalitarian power claims for the state and the individual remained throughout his life the theme of Havel's work.

During a writers conference in June 1967, he sharply attacked as bold as the state censorship and the power apparatus of the Communist Party. In 1968 Havel was during the Prague Spring, chairman of the "Club of Independent Writers" and was among the 150 signatories of an open letter to the Central Committee of the Czech Communist Party. Their demand: more democracy.

The writer acted as spokesman for the non-Communist intellectuals who supported the reforms introduced by Alexander Dubcek process. After the invasion of the Warsaw Pact was not allowed to publish Havel - he lived on a remote farm, and earned his living as a laborer in a brewery.

In the following years, Havel was banned in his homeland and was ignored - at the same time strengthened in his international reputation as a playwright. On numerous pieces of German stage celebrating his great successes, Havel was honored with a number of literary prizes. In Czechoslovakia, but he was still harassed.
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Vaclav Havel
A European life

In October 1977 he was sentenced a few months after the foundation of human and civil rights movement "Charter 77", for the first time because of "subversive" and "subversive" activities to a prison term. A year later, he was the regime under house arrest - because he continues for civil rights and began appearing in the self-published pieces and writings published abroad. After setting up a "Committee for the Defense of Victims of injustice", he was arrested again in 1979 and eventually convicted for "Revolutionary Road" four and a half years in prison.

Hard times at home


The 1979-1982 written from prison "Letters to Olga," his first wife died in 1996, gave to the readers in the West a glimpse of the injustice and hopelessness that time. "Olga's antenna was a reality," recalled Jiri Grusa, companion and from 1990 to 1997 Ambassador in Germany, in a radio interview. She was a counterweight to the philosophically interested writers and tried to warn him, even if the political commitment was too risky.


"They keep you in the cage - they put you behind bars Havlitschku -. Havel". The protest song written in 1977 by singer-songwriter Jaroslav Hutka for his imprisoned friend Havel. The dissident became a symbol of resistance against the Communists. The song accompanied the days of the Velvet Revolution in 1989.

In the upheaval of 1989 won the "Power of the Powerless," Havel said the title of essays from the year 1978. On Wenceslas Square resounded to cries of "Havel to the Castle." The regime fell, and dissidents like Havel and Jiri Dienstbier, who died in January to build democratic structures. As the new President Havel of Czechoslovakia elected as the first destination of a trip abroad, the two German states. He said that the relations with its larger neighbor has a key role in the future.
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In his early years as President Havel is revered by most of his compatriots. He embodied the hopes of the Czechs to a new democratic beginning. But the respect faded quickly - because the political and economic changes demanded many victims of the Czechs. And Havel, the politician who could not deliver. Instead, he swung philosophical speeches, which did not meet the real life of his people. Abroad, the Czech president, however, was highly regarded - but in his homeland, he became increasingly marginalized. The former dissident, was the stimulus figure. In 2003 he retired from the office.

Politically, remained healthy for years to heavily damaged last Havel. In July of this year, he threatened to return the German Quadriga Prize, even after this to the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin should be awarded. The controversial ceremony was canceled. The price should rather be awarded to a Chinese dissident and political prisoner Liu Xiaobo, Havel sent a message then.

Havel knew what freedom means a penalty for dissidents. He died Sunday morning at the age of 75.