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Václav Havel

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Václav Havel
Image:Vaclav havel.jpg

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In office
1989 – 1992
1993 – 2003
Preceded by Gustáv Husák
Succeeded by Václav Klaus
Born October 5, 1936
Prague, Czechoslovakia
Political party Civic Forum
Spouse
  1. Olga Havlová
  2. Dagmar Veškrnová
Religion theism


Václav Havel, GCB, CC, (IPA: [ˈvaːʦlaf ˈɦavɛl]) (born October 5, 1936 in Prague) is a Czech writer and dramatist. He was the ninth and last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Václav Havel grew up in a well-known entrepreneurial and intellectual family, which was closely linked to the cultural and political events in Czechoslovakia from the 1920's to the 1940's. Because of these links the Czech communist government did not allow Havel to study formally after he had completed his required schooling in 1951. In the first part of the 1950's, the young Havel entered into a four-year apprenticeship as a chemical laboratory assistant and simultaneously took evening classes to complete his secondary education (which he did in 1954). For political reasons he was not accepted into any post-secondary school with a humanities program; therefore, he opted to study at the Faculty of Economics of Czech Technical University. He left this program after two years. Member of Junák (Boy Scout) in 1947-1949.

[edit] Playwright

The intellectual tradition of his family compelled Václav Havel to pursue the humanitarian values of Czech culture, which were harshly suppressed in the 1950's. After military service (1957-59) he worked as a stagehand in Prague (at the Theatre On the Balustrade - Divadlo Na zábradlí) and studied drama by correspondence at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (DAMU). His first publicly performed full-length play, besides various vaudeville collaborations, was The Garden Party (1963). Presented in a season of Theater of the Absurd, at the Balustrade, it won him international acclaim. It was soon followed by Memorandum, one of his best known plays. In 1964, Havel married Olga Šplíchalová, to the despair of his mother.<ref>Exit Havel by David Remnick, The New Yorker, 10 February 2003 [1]</ref>

[edit] Entry into political life

Following the suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968 he was banned from the theatre and became more politically active. This culminated with the publication of the Charter 77 manifesto, written partially in response to the imprisonment of members of the Czech psychedelic band Plastic People of the Universe. His political activities resulted in multiple stays in prison, the longest being four years, and also subjected him to constant government surveillance and harassment.

After his long prison stay he wrote Largo Desolato, a play about a political writer who fears being sent back to prison. He was also famous for his essays, most particularly for his brilliant articulation of "Post-Totalitarianism" (see Power of the Powerless), a term used to describe the modern social and political order that enabled people to "live within a lie".

A passionate supporter of nonviolent resistance, a role in which he has been compared, by ex-US President Bill Clinton, to Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, he became a leading figure in the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the bloodless end to communism in Czechoslovakia.

[edit] Presidency

President of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel (right) and Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski.

On December 29, 1989, as leader of the Civic Forum, he became president by a unanimous vote of the Federal Assembly.

After the free elections of 1990 he retained the presidency. Despite increasing tensions, Havel strongly supported the retention of the federation of the Czechs and the Slovaks during the breakup of Czechoslovakia, known as the Dissolution of Czechoslovakia. On July 3 1992 the federal parliament did not elect Havel - the only candidate for presidency - due to a lack of support from Slovak MPs. After the Slovaks issued their Declaration of Independence, he resigned as president on July 20. When the Czech Republic was created he stood for election as president there on January 26, 1993, and won.

Following a legal dispute with his sister-in-law, Havel decided to sell his 50 percent stake in the Lucerna Palace on Wenceslas Square, a legendary dance-hall built by his grandfather Václav M. Havel. In a transaction mastered by Marián Čalfa, Havel sold the estate to Václav Junek, a former communist spy in France and leader of soon-to-be-bankrupt conglomerate Chemapol Group, who later openly admitted he bribed politicians of Czech Social Democratic Party.<ref>The Poet of Democracy and His Burdens by Paul Berman; New York Times Magazine, an insert of the NY Times; May 11 1997 (also a cover photo); electronic version can be found on Josef Schrabal's website in section New York Herald [2]</ref>

In December 1996 the chain-smoking Havel was diagnosed as having lung cancer <ref>. Vaclav Havel: from "bourgeois reactionary" to president, author not mentioned, Radio Prague - the international service of Czech radio [3] </ref> The disease reappeared two years later. In 1997, less than a year after the death of his wife Olga, who was beloved almost as a saint by the Czech people<ref>Vaclav Havel: End of an era by Richard Allen Greene, BBC News online, 9 October 2003 [4]</ref>, Havel remarried to actress Dagmar Veškrnová. That year he was the recipient of the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. Havel was re-elected president in 1998 and underwent colonotomy when on holiday in Innsbruck. Havel left office after his second term as Czech president ended on February 2, 2003; Václav Klaus, one of his greatest political opponents, was elected his successor on February 28, 2003.

Samuel Beckett's play Catastrophe is dedicated to him, as are Tom Stoppard's Professional Foul (1977) and Rock 'n' Roll (2006).

[edit] Post-presidential career

In November and December, 2006 Havel is spending eight weeks as an artist-in-residence at Columbia University. At the same time, Untitled Theater Company #61 is hosting a Havel Festival, the first ever complete festival of his plays. The events come in conjunction with his 70th birthday.

Vaclav Havel is also a prominent figure in the fight against terrorism. He is a co-chair of the Committee on the Present Danger which aims for "fighting terrorism and ideologies that drive it".

[edit] Notes

<references/>

[edit] Havel's plays

Image:Vaclav Havel IMF.jpg
  • An Evening with the Family (1960)
  • Motormorphosis (1960)
  • The Garden Party (1963)
  • The Memorandum (1965)
  • The Increased Difficulty of Concentration (1968)
  • Butterfly on the Antennna (1968)
  • Guardian Angel (1968)
  • Conspirators (1971)
  • The Beggar's Opera (1975)
  • Mountain Hotel (1976)
  • Audience (1978)
  • Private View (1978)
  • Protest (1978)
  • Mistake (1983)
  • Largo desolato (1985)
  • Temptation (1986)
  • Redevelopment (1987)
  • Tomorrow (1988)

[edit] Havel's poetry:

[edit] Havel's books include:

  • Letters to Olga (1988)
  • Open Letters (1991)
  • Disturbing the Peace (1991)
  • Summer Meditations (1992/93)
  • The Power of the Powerless (1985)
  • The Art of the Impossible (1998)

[edit] References

  • Vaclav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts by John Keane, Basic Books 2000, ISBN 0465037194 (sample chapter [5])
  • Interpreting Václav Havel by Walter H. Capp, a Cross Currents study [6]
  • Vaclav Havel: Civic Responsibility in the Postmodern Age, by James F. Pontuso, Rowman & Littlefield 2004, ISBN 0-7425-2256-3 [7]

[edit] External links

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Preceded by:
Gustáv Husák 		President of Czechoslovakia
1989–1992 		Succeeded by:
(none)
Preceded by:
(none) 		President of the Czech Republic
1993–2003 		Succeeded by:
Václav Klaus
Presidents of Czechoslovakia
"First Republic" Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1918-1935) • Edvard Beneš (1935-1938; 1940/1945-1948)
after Munich Agreement Emil Hácha (1938-1939)
Communist Klement Gottwald (1948-1953) • Antonín Zápotocký (1953-1957) • Antonín Novotný (1957-1968) • Ludvík Svoboda (1968-1975) • Gustáv Husák (1975-1989)
after Velvet Revolution Václav Havel (1989-1992)

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zh:瓦茨拉夫·哈维尔
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