Visiting Prague

Summary: live and political intervention of the first President of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel, also a great writer and dramatist.

Václav Havel was born in the 5th of October in the year of 1936 in a well-known entrepreneurial and intellectual family. His family was hilly connected to the actions that took place in Czechoslovakia in the decades of 20 and 40. For this reason it was hard to Václav to continue his studies after the completing the required education in 1951. In the 50’s Havel started an apprenticeship as a chemical laboratory assistant and at the same time he studied completed his secondary education in the evening until 1954 when he finished. After this his wish was to study humanistics although the state didn’t allow him to enter any post-secondary school, for this reason he studied in the Faculty of Czech Technical University, although he gave up after tow years.
Between 1957 and1959 he completed his military service but after that he felt the theater call. He worked as a stage technician at Divadlo ABC and late at Divadlo Na zabradli. Through he felt the need to study this art deeply so 1962 he studied at the Faculty of Theatre and the Academy of Musical Arts by correspondence, finishing his studies in 1966.
He started working officially in the theater in the play The Garden Party. Then he participated in a season of the Theater of the Absurd at the Balustrade whish gave him already some prestige. In 1964 Havel marries Olga Splíchalova to who he refers as his indispensable source of support.
No Czech was indifferent to the events of the Prague Spring in the 1968, and Havel  was no exception, although his extraordinarily was to write an open letter in 1075 to the President Husak condemning the political repression characterized by the years of the so-called communist normalization and the accumulated antagonism in Czechoslovak society. His Humanistic side was coming up, therefore he formed the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted, which fought against the communist government and resultant oppression.
His texts were never published while the communist regime and he was arrested servel times spending 5 years in prison. Although he was one of the creatour of the Charter 77 (an informal civic initiative, named after the document Charter 77 from January 1977) written partially in response to the imprisonment of members of the Czech band The Plastic People of the Universe.
After this events he wrote the play Largo Desolato, and an essay Post-Totalitarianism. Important works glorying a non-violent resistance and an icon of the Velvet Revolution.
In 1989 he was voted unanimously the President of the Czechoslovakia. Havel presided over the privatization of the Czechoslovak economy even though he, like much of the Civic Forum, had previously spoken in support of what is sometimes called a “third way” toward neither Soviet-style socialism nor Western-style capitalism. Havel presided over the privatization of the Czechoslovak economy even though he, like much of the Civic Forum, had beforehand spoken in maintain of what is sometimes called a “third way” toward neither Soviet-style socialism nor Western-style capitalism.
Is first award come in 1990 form the Liberal International, the Prize For Freedom. He retained the presidency in the year of 1990 but two years later he didn’t was not reelected.
After the foundation of the Czech Republic, in 1993 he was again elected for the presidency of the new country. This time he took great and important measures for the democracy of the country. He lessen the pressure in overcrowded prisons and release those who may have been falsely imprisoned during the Communist era.
In 1994 he won the Philadelphia Liberty Medal for the Human Rights defence
His wife dies in 1996 victim of lung cancer and a year later he married Dagmar Veskrnová. In 1997 he was recipient ofr the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca.
In 1998 he was reelected but he left the office after his second term and his presidency of the Czech Republic ended in February of 2002.
In 2002 recipient of the Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award by the by the Prague Society for the International Cooperation. A year later he won the international award Gandhi Peace Prize by India and in this year he was recipient of the Amnisty International’s Ambassador of Conscience Award. In 2004 he got the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
After 2006 Havel went to Columbia, then to meet Bill Clinton in the U.S. Also in America his plays were represented in Havel’s Festival in New York City by the Untitled Theater Company #61. In 2007 he wrote To the Castle and Back. He kept working with the theater, this time with Belarus Free Theatre. He
He was has an extended work of poetry, plays, non-fiction books until today he is an important figure not only in the Czech Republic with a great and relevant opinion. A true symbol of the democracy, freedom and Human Rights.

Trackback URI |