Václav Havel

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

Biography

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 communists did not allow Havel to study formally after having completed required schooling in 1951. In the first part of the 1950's, a young Václav 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.

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 (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-lengthplay, 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 to the despair of his motherExit Havel by David Remnick, The New Yorker, 10 February 2003 ^* married Olga Šplíchalová.

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 cost him multiple stays in prison, the longest being four years, and also subjected him to constant government surveillance and harrassment. After his long prison stay he wrote Largo Desalato, 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, he became a leading figure in the Velvet Revolution of 1989.

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 spy in France, former member of the Communist party central committee, good friend of Vaclav Klaus, and leader of soon-to-be-bankrupt conglomerate Chemapol Group.

In December 1996 the chain-smoking Havel was diagnosed as having lung cancer . Vaclav Havel: from "bourgeois reactionary" to president, author not mentioned, Radio Prague - the international service of Czech radio ^* He underwent successful surgery at the University hospital in Innsbruck. 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 peopleVaclav Havel: End of an era by Richard Allen Greene BBC News online, 9 October 2003 ^*, Havel remarried to actress Dagmar Veškrnová.

Havel was re-elected president in 1998. 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).

Havel will be spending an 8 weeks in residency at Columbia University in the Fall 2006. At the same time, Untitled Theater Company #61 will be hosting a Havel Festival, the first ever complete festival of his plays. The events come in conjunction with his 70th birthday.