Vaclav Havel has died at 75 years

Vaclav Havel is dead

The former Czech President Vaclav Havel, the former is dead playwrights and hero of the anti-communist movement, died on Sunday with 75 years in his cottage in northern Bohemia. An obituary.

What was the most absurd things in his presidency, Vaclav Havel was once asked. The answer: That he was so long president, and then one of two states: first Czechoslovakia and then, from 1993, of the Czech Republic.

"Havel na Hrad!" - "Havel to the castle," she cried in November 1989, Prague, on Wenceslas Square. The writer with the little mustache, at the beginning of 1989 even in communist prison, he should be president now. "Truth and love must triumph over lies and hatred," Havel said to the cheering protesters. Only a few weeks later Havel was president. A quiet, modest man, the world suddenly became a symbol for the democratic beginning of his country.

"My only school was life"

"I've only been two months, President," he said during a speech in Congress, "and went through no president school. My only school was life." This life had made him so far not easy. Because of its bourgeois origin, he was allowed to study it at first. He was a laborer at the theater, wrote his first plays and became a dissident in 1968, when Warsaw Pact troops invaded Prague in 1977 as a founder of the 77th democracy movement Charter

An irony of history: Havel himself was in July 1991 in Prague, the end of the Warsaw pact was sealed. His finest hour as president, he told himself, "This moment, when I was at the last summit of the Warsaw Pact in Prague. I said that the pact has outlived itself. This moment actually ended the bipolar sharp dividing the world into spheres of interest. "

Havel condemned the expulsion of the Sudeten early

Havel was also a man of reconciliation. It was he who first condemned the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans. "That was not a punishment, but revenge. In addition, we have not thrown out due to a proven guilt of individuals, but only as members of a particular people. And so, on the assumption that we pave the historical justice the way, we have many innocent people, especially women and children suffering inflicted. "

From Czechoslovak to Czech President

But Havel's presidency also knew bitter hours: "We have enough of Havel," shouted the summer of 1992, Slovak nationalists and pelted him with raw eggs. A little later, Havel stepped down as Czechoslovakia's president. "My fellow has. Today at noon Chancellor Karel Schwarzenberg sent to the Federal Assembly of my letter in which I communicate that I am on 20 July 1992 by 18 clock of my office as President of Czechoslovakia resign. I wish you happiness, health and firm hope in the future. goodbye. " Havel then passed out of his office.

Czechoslovakia was divided in 1993 became the first President Havel of the Czech Republic - and stayed there for ten years - in spite of serious illnesses. A critical, uncomfortable president, a moralist, who led his country to the west, the west, but criticized them simultaneously. "The global civilization, which now envelops the whole world that forces them to the same products to the same habits, the same behavioral patterns and forms of communication - all this brings us indeed closer together, provoked but also a backlash in the form of growing nationalism , fundamentalism or fanaticism - ethnically, religiously, socially or ideologically, "Havel was convinced.

A life without politics - impossible?

Early 2003, Havel's final term ended. A retired but he still does not know. He stood up for human rights, where they should be enforced - or at least where some thought they had to enforce them, in Iraq, for example. Irritating, especially in western Europe, where the image of "good people of Prague" by was shaken.

But Havel was also able to discover, he wrote a book about his presidency, and - the big dream of the playwright - even once a play. "Odcházeni" - "The finish" it said, and was listed in 2008 with great success. A piece about an ex-politician who is crazy without the politics. No, Vaclav Havel said in his final months and over again: I did not autobiographical.