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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Vclav Havel
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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Vaclav Havel
Vaclav Havel's acclaimed plays about the oppressive Communist rule of his native Czechoslovakia caused him to be imprisoned numerous times. He persevered as a strong voice for freedom of his homeland and a voice throughout the world for democracy. Havel became president of the new Czech Republic, leading the new democratic nation until earlier this year.
President Havel Receives Medal of Freedom
President Havel was awarded the prestigious Medal of Freedom by President Bush in a ceremony at the White House on July 23. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is America's highest civil award. It is conferred upon men and women of high achievement in the arts and entertainment, public service, science, education, athletics, business and other fields. For most recipients, this award is a special distinction added to many prior honors. The Medal of Freedom is generally given only to Americans, but has been awarded to a very few prominent world leaders (German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and South African President Nelson Mandela to name three). President Havel, already in a select group of distinguished foreign leaders receiving the award, is also the first Czech to receive it. AFoCR Director General Wesley Clark received the Award in 2000.
President Havel's Award Citation reads: A champion of democracy and opportunity, Vaclav Havel has helped lead the fight for freedom in Central and Eastern Europe. After enduring oppression as a playwright living under communist rule, he worked to bring about a new birth of freedom, and served as president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the new Czech Republic. His courage, determination, and dedication to human rights won him the respect of the world. The United States honors this remarkable leader for his many personal sacrifices and contributions to the cause of freedom and justice.
In presenting the award to President Havel, President Bush said about him, "We're honored by the presence of an artist whose life brought two experiences he never could have expected, that of a prisoner and that of a President. In the days of Communist rule over Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel ridiculed the pretensions of an oppressive government and was viewed as an enemy of the state. The most subversive act of this playwright was telling the truth about tyranny. And when the truth finally triumphed in a 'kindhearted revolution,' the people elected this dignified, charming, humble, determined man to lead their country. Unintimidated by threats, unchanged by political power, this good man has suffered much in the cause of liberty and he has become one of liberty's great heroes."
Vaclav Havel
Czech President
Vaclav Havel
Czech President
Born: October 5, 1936; Prague, Czechoslovakia
Education: Graduated from Czech University of Technology (1957); Academy Mus. Arts, Prague, 1966; Honorary degrees from numerous universities including York University, Toronto; University of Lyon, France; LeHigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Military Service: Czechoslovakian Army, 1957-59
Occupation: Playwright, Politician
Family: Widowed
Early Years: Stagehand at Theater on the Balustrade, Prague; Brewery laborer; Political dissident and human rights activist. Imprisoned 4 times, spent nearly 5 years in prison, 1977-89
Political Career: Elected president of Czechoslovakia (1989); Elected president of the Czech Republic (1992).
Office: Kancelar Prezidenta Republiky, 119 08 Prague, Czech Republic
Vaclav Havel
Czechoslovakia's foremost dissident and champion of human rights was born on October 5, 1936, in Prague. Vaclav Havel's father was a wealthy businessman; the family home was full of culture and intellectual activity.
When a Moscow-backed coup took over Czechoslovakia in 1948, the Havel family was declared a "class enemy" and their property confiscated. Havel was not allowed automatic school promotion above the elementary grades. He finished high school at night by working days as a laboratory technician. His applications to liberal arts colleges were rejected, so Havel studied economics at the Czech University of Technology. After his graduation in 1957, he served two years in the army. Havel became interested in drama, and began a regimental theater company while in the military. Havel applied to the university drama school in Prague, but was turned down.
Havel took a job as a stagehand at Prague's ABC Theater in 1959. He published an article defending the absurdist plays shown by Theater on the Balustrade and other local theatrical companies. The director of the Theater on the Balustrade asked Havel to work with the group, which he did during a politically tolerant period from 1962-1968. Havel traveled to the United States in 1968, where he identified with the '60s counterculture, especially its rock music.
Russian tanks brought an end to Czechoslovakia's brief period of artistic freedom in August 1968. Afterward, the Soviet-dominated, hard-line Communist government banned Havel's plays, repeatedly arrested him and jailed him twice. The only job he was allowed was as a brewery laborer, loading barrels of beer. The regime arrested Havel in 1975 after he wrote an open letter to President Gustav Husak describing Czechoslovakia as lacking real life.
The 1977 arrest and trial of a Czechoslovakian rock band called "The Plastic People of the Universe," named for Frank Zappa lyrics, had a profound effect on Havel's outlook. Many Czech artists and intellectuals signed a manifesto (Charter 77) protesting the situation. In the wholesale arrests that followed, Havel -- one of three spokesmen for the protest -- was tried on charges of subversion. The following year he and other signatories formed an organization called the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Persecuted, and they were also arrested and tried. Havel was sentenced to four years of hard labor. During his prison term, authorities distorted one of Havel's letters to make it appear he had betrayed the Charter 77 movement. In the waning days of the Communist government in 1989, Havel was sentenced again for leading antigovernment demonstrations.
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev tried to save Communism in 1989 by liberalizing it, but the resulting wave of democratization that swept Eastern Europe instead effectively spurred an end to Communism. The Communist regime collapsed in Czechoslovakia in 1989, and Havel was elected president. He brought American rock musician Frank Zappa to Czechoslovakia and gave him a position in the ministry of culture. Havel addressed the U.S. Congress, telling the assembly the best way it could help Czechoslovakia was to promote democracy in Russia.
Havel was re-elected president in 1990, presiding over the new Czechoslovakian parliament. Unfortunately, Czechoslovakia's days were numbered. The elimination of the Soviet system also meant the elimination of the adhesive that bound the disparate ethnic groups of Eastern Europe. Old ethnic divisions re-emerged, focusing on the privatization of state-run industries. In 1992, Czechoslovakia split into Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Havel resigned to show his disapproval, but the new Czech Republic elected him president for a five-year term.
Vaclav Havel is popular both nationally and internationally, but in the Czech Republic the prime minister wields true political power. Havel serves mainly as a moral and ethical force in the country's politics.
Havel's wife, Olga Havlova, died of cancer in January 1996. Havel himself has been treated for cancer. Surgeons removed half of his right lung and a small malignant tumor in December 1996.
As a playwright, Havel's works communicate an existential philosophy, and their timing reflects the circumstances of his life. His earliest plays were juvenilia -- "The Life Ahead" and "An Evening with the Family." Havel also collaborated on the plays "Hitchhiking," "Mrs. Hermannova's Best Years" and the musical revue "The Deranged Turtledove."
In the 1960s he wrote absurdist, Kafka-esque comedies satirizing the Communist bureaucracy. His first full-length play was "The Garden Party" (1963), in which government employees are unable to dismantle a bureaucracy because they can't decipher the bureaucratic language used in it. That play was followed by "The Memorandum" (1965), in which the head of an office tries to comply with a government directive written in unintelligible bureaucratic language. Later, Havel wrote "The Increased Difficulty of Concentration," a bedroom farce.
In the dark days after Soviet tanks crushed the "Prague Spring of 1968," a period of political and artistic freedom, Havel wrote "The Conspirators" and "The Mountain Hotel," two existential plays.
In the long period of heightened repression that followed the Soviet invasion, Havel turned to writing underground press "samizdat" works -- one-act plays in which characters try to reconcile their consciences with their Communist collusion. Those works included "Interview" (1975), "A Private View" (1975) and "Protest" (1978). The protagonist is Havel himself, called Vanek in the plays, a dissident and writer persecuted by the government. The plays were performed in secret.
After his four-year sentence to hard labor for "subversion," Havel wrote "Mistake" (1983), in which he criticized the tendency of humans to not only adapt to repressive systems but to devise totalitarian societies at their own levels.
Havel also wrote the full-length plays "Largo Desolato," dramatizing humans pitted against the totalitarian state, and "Temptation," an adaptation of the Faustian theme. In 1988, he wrote "Tomorrow." A 1986 memoir was translated into English as "Disturbing the Peace."
"Letters to Olga: June 1979-September 1982" contains letters Havel wrote to his wife from prison. "Living in Truth" (1986) is composed of six essays by Havel and 16 essays written about him by Samuel Beckett and Heinrich Boll.
"Open Letters" (1991) is a collection of Havel's articles, speeches, interviews and writings between 1965 and 1990.
After he was elected president, Havel wrote "Summer Meditations" (1992), in which he reflects on his political experiences.
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Medal History
