Václav Havel

✶October 5, 1936

†December 18, 2011

Czech Republic

29 candles burning, 152 lit in all

About their life

Václav Havel was born in Prague in 1936 into a prominent family whose property was seized after the communist takeover, barring him from formal higher education. He found his voice in the theatre, working his way up from stagehand at the Theatre on the Balustrade to resident playwright. Absurdist plays such as The Garden Party and The Memorandum made him an internationally recognized dramatist by the mid-1960s.

After the Soviet-led invasion of 1968, Havel's works were banned and he became the regime's most visible critic. He co-authored the human rights manifesto Charter 77 and the essay The Power of the Powerless, spending nearly five years in prison for his convictions. In November 1989 he stood at the center of the Velvet Revolution, and within weeks the dissident was elected president of Czechoslovakia.

Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia and, from 1993 to 2003, the first president of the Czech Republic, guiding the country toward NATO and the European Union. He remained a writer at heart, insisting that politics must answer to conscience. Prague's international airport now bears his name, and his call for living in truth endures as his legacy.

Playwright, dissident, and statesman who led Czechoslovakia out of communism and became the first president of the Czech Republic, embodying the moral force of the Velvet Revolution.

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Biography from the article Václav Havel on the English Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.