Václav Havel
Václav Havel [ va ː t͡slaf ɦavɛl ] ( born October 5, 1936 in Prague, † 18 December, 2011 Vlčice - Hrádeček, Okres Trutnov, Hradec Králové Region ) was a Czech playwright, essayist, human rights activists and politicians, the one during the reign of the Communist Party of the leading critics of the regime of Czechoslovakia and was one of the initiators of the Charter 77. He is one of the pioneers of Czech-German reconciliation and signer of the German - Czech Declaration of 21 January 1997. After the Velvet Revolution, in which he played a key role, he was from 1989 to 1992, the last (ninth ) President of Czechoslovakia and 1993-2003, the first of the Czech Republic. He was also a member of the writers community Obec spisovatelů and honorary member of the Club of Rome.
Life
Havel was born into an influential Prague upper middle class family. His grandfather had the same name, among others, the famous Lucerna entertainment complex on Prague's Wenceslas Square, his uncle build the Prague Barrandov film studios.
With the beginning of the communist government of Czechoslovakia in February 1948, the possession of the Havel family went over to the State. The young Václav was allowed after the end of compulsory education in 1951 not attend secondary school, worked as an assistant in a chemistry lab and completed a secondary education in an evening school from. In addition, he worked as a taxi driver in order to fund the visit of the evening school. Approved for political reasons at any faculty of humanities, he began in 1954 to study economics, which he broke off after two years.
After another two years of military service, he was a stage technician in two small Prague theaters, Divadlo ABC and the Theatre on the railing, in which his first pieces were listed such as The Garden Party. Since the age of 20 Havel wrote articles for literature and theater magazines. His standing in the tradition of absurd theater pieces, and his articles have defined and show the atmosphere that led to the Prague Spring of 1968.
Famous Havel's plays of this period are The Memorandum (1965) and the Increased Difficulty of Concentration ( 1968), which emerged from the thesis of his correspondence course at the Theatre Faculty in the years 1962 to 1966. 1967 at the Fourth Writers' Congress in Prague excited Havel first political stir when he publicly criticized the censorship and the absurdity of the power apparatus of the Communist Party.
During the Prague Spring in 1968 he was chairman of the " Club Independent Writers " and soon became the most prominent and most consistent spokesman for the non-Communist intellectuals who supported the initiated by Alexander Dubček reform process.
During the so-called "normalization " after the crushing of the Prague Spring by Warsaw Pact troops Havel stepped repeatedly and publicly against the regime of President, Gustav Husak, and in 1977 was one of the three main initiators of the Charter 77, a civil rights movement in the late 1970s and in the 1980s to the center of the opposition was.
During this time, Havel was arrested three times and spent a total of about five years in prison. Literary witness this time are the letters to Olga, his wife Olga, born Šplíchalová which he had in 1956 met and married in 1964 and who was his companion until her death in 1996. Havel's prison sentences were suspended in 1983 after international protests, as Havel became ill and was subsequently discharged to a public hospital.
After the occupation by Warsaw Pact troops in August 68 Havel opposed the communist conformity and received in Czechoslovakia performing and publication ban. His works have been published at this time but almost completely in Rowohlt Verlag in Germany. On January 16, 1989, the 20th anniversary of the self-immolation of Jan Palach in Wenceslas Square in Prague, Havel was due to attend a memorial service, was arrested and sentenced to nine months imprisonment intensified on February 21 for "hooliganism " as a repeat offender. Then when he wanted to accept the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in Frankfurt am Main, he was not allowed to leave the country. The actor Maximilian Schell read his prepared speech.
Havel was one of the main personalities in the first worn by students and artists Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. Previously he had in the 1980s, when the political climate became more liberal, the petition " Some sentences " ( Několik VET) co-initiated. Now he has become the leading representative of the Revolution founded ( November 19, 1989) Civic Forum Občanské fórum (OF). The upheaval in the political situation in Czechoslovakia was virtually sealed when Havel as a candidate of the Civic Forum on 29 December 1989 by the - elected representatives of the Federal Assembly President of the Government - until then communist. In this role, he led the country on 5 July 1990 to free elections. The new parliament confirmed him as president.
During his term of office as head of state of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic - so the new name of the state - but multiplied disputes and controversies between the Czechs and the Slovaks. Havel's attempts to get the Federation were unsuccessful.
With the next presidential elections on 3 July 1992 by Mr Havel was not a sufficient number of votes and stepped back, although he government office three months after the end of his term was, after former Constitution to exercise. The reason for the vote defeat was mainly that he had spoken out in favor of maintaining a common state of Czechs and Slovaks and special national aspirations condemned. For the vote he therefore lacked the votes Slovak MPs.
After the peaceful separation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia on 1 January 1993 Havel was elected on January 26, 1993 by a large majority to the President of the Czech Republic. On January 20, 1998 he was confirmed in his office; his second term ended on 2 February 2003. According to the constitution, he could not again a candidate for the highest office in the state.
Václav Havel was a convinced European to set on European integration. The meeting held in December 2002 EU Summit in Copenhagen, designed as Havel merit the foundation for the integration of the Czech Republic into the European Union.
Since 1997, he was married to his second marriage to actress Dagmar Veškrnová.
Havel died at the age of 75 years on 18 December 2011, his country house in northern Bohemia in place Hrádeček (municipality Vlčice ) at Trutnov in the Giant Mountains of the consequences of respiratory disease. He was honored with a state and the urn with his ashes in the cemetery in Prague in Vinohrady.
Worldview
Vaclav Havel is a member of the theater of the absurd and his narrative works are in the tradition.
The defining basic theme in Havel's dramatic as essayistischem work - as the cause of absurdity - was the alienation of modern man from what he called life world, an ideal conception of man on earth. This will caused by the fact that in the enlightened progress society, science has taken the position of highest authority that was previously reserved for the unknown Higher (God or the like. ), . This alienation Havel saw as the cause of the problems of humanity today with the environmental destruction that was caused by an enabled by science mechanization of the economy; but also in the former dictatorships of communism and their idea of a scientifically organized, equitable livelihood Society (scientific socialism), an extreme form of alienation. This is evidenced in the opinion of Havel one built on lies society in which words lose their meaning, such as the Eastern Bloc inflationary used word peace, which actually meant only the preservation of the status quo and thus maintaining the power of the Covenant in this system of government. In his plays Havel showed the absurdity of this situation. In his essays the theme of alienation in the world dominated by science is consistently recognizable. Havel was influenced in this idea of the own statements after by the Czech philosopher Václav Bělohradský.
Vaclav Havel was one of the main advocates of the Czech-German reconciliation. As early as 1990 he condemned as the first major Czechoslovak politicians the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia after the year 1945., Which earned him hostility in Czechoslovakia. On 21 January 1997 he signed with the German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the German - Czech Declaration, without to address compensation issues, which earned him bitter criticism both in the Czechoslovak Nazi victims from the time of the Protectorate as well as the expellees Association of Sudeten Germans.
Awards
Havel's literary and dramatic work as well as his lifelong pursuit of the preservation of human rights was honored with a number of literary awards, international awards and honorary doctorates.
On October 15, 1989 Havel received in the absence of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. Participating in the ceremony at the St. Paul Church was not possible for him, as his leave was denied. Instead, he asked his friend Maximilian Schell, recite the speech written by him.
In 1990 he received the award, the political book of the Friedrich -Ebert -Stiftung. Also in 1990 Havel was honored in Switzerland with the Gottlieb Duttweiler Prize for his political work, the eulogy of Friedrich Dürrenmatt shortly before his death moved to Switzerland sustainable. The UNESCO awarded him the 1990 Simón Bolívar Prize. In 1991, Havel was awarded the International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen " in recognition of its commitment to the spirit of freedom and the realization of peace in his country and throughout Europe ." In 1993, the Theodor Heuss Foundation awarded him the Theodor Heuss Prize in recognition of its democratic commitment and his moral courage. 1998 Havel was awarded the Peace of Westphalia price. 2000 Havel was awarded the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca French.
He was honored in 2002 for his literary life's work with the Hans Sahl price. 2003 Havel was the Hanno R. elbow Citizenship Award in Prague, the Grand Cross with Necklace of the Czech Order of the White Lion, the German National Prize of the German National Foundation and the Gandhi Peace Prize, Government of India. 2004 Havel was awarded the highest civilian award of the U.S., the Presidential Medal of Freedom ( The Presidential Medal of Freedom ), and the Light of Truth award. In 2005 he received the Austrian Medal for Science and Art, 2006 Bridge Award of the City of Regensburg and 2008 as a result of his services to the German unit of the Point Alpha Price ( eulogy was previously the former German foreign minister Hans -Dietrich Genscher ). 2009 Havel was awarded the International Democracy Award of the City of Bonn, the Quadriga Award and the Golden Hen, which paid tribute to his services to the German unit again. In 2010 he was awarded the Prague Franz Kafka Prize for Literature, 2011 with Order of St. George.
Havel was recently proposed several times in 2004 for the Nobel Peace Prize. This was not attributed to him.
Works (selection)
- Protest, the play in 1988
- Attempt to live in the truth. ( Original title: The Power of the Powerless ) Rowohlt, Reinbek 1978, ISBN 978-3-499126222. (Excerpt )
- The Vanek trilogy. Audience, vernissage, protest. Temptation. Remediation. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1989, ISBN 3-499-12737-7
- Letters to Olga. Considerations from prison. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1989, ISBN 3-499-12732-6
- Morality in times of globalization. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1998, ISBN 3-499-22382-1
- Remote interrogation. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1990, ISBN 3-499-12859-4
- The Rogue Opera. This mountain hotel. Increased Difficulty of Concentration. The error. Plays. Rowohlt, Reinbek, 1990, ISBN 3-499-12880-2
- Keep it short please. Thoughts and memories on issues of Karel Hvízd'ala. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2007, ISBN 3-498-02990-8 ( autobiography 1990-2003 )
- Odcházení ( = finish ), theater, world premiere on 22 May 2008 at the Archa in Prague, German -language premiere on April 25, 2009 at the Theater Aachen.
- Fifteen moods. Letters from prison with photographs of Magnum reporter Erich Lessing. Publisher Thomas Reche, Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz i d 2011, ISBN 978-3-929566-99-4