biography
pronunciation:
[havl, vahtslaf]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1936– )
|
| biography:
| Playwright, president of Czechoslovakia (1989–92), and president of the Czech Republic (1993–2003), born in Prague, Czech Republic. He studied at the Prague Academy of Dramatic Art, and began work in the theatre as a stagehand, then became resident writer for the Prague ‘Theatre on the Balustrade’ (1960–9). He was active in the Prague Spring era of reform which ended with the Warsaw Pact invasion in 1968. In 1977 Havel became a co-founder of the Charter 77 human rights initiative. He was under house-arrest in 1978–9, and then imprisoned for four years, his plays only being performed abroad. These include Zahradni slavnost (1963, The Garden Party), Spiklenci (1970, The Conspirators), and Temptation (1987). He was imprisoned again in 1989 but, as one of the leaders of the Civic Forum, a liberal political party, was elected president by direct popular vote in December following the collapse of the hardline Communist Party leadership. He resigned in 1992 in acknowledgement of the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, but was elected the first president of the new Czech Republic in January 1993. He retired at the end of his second term as president. A selection of his speeches and writings from 1990 to 1994, Towards a Civil Society, was published in English in 1995. |
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