Václav havel children
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Václav Havel
Last president of Czechoslovakia and first president of the Czech Republic (1936–2011)
For other uses, see Václav Havel (disambiguation).
Václav Havel (Czech pronunciation:[ˈvaːtslavˈɦavɛl]ⓘ; 5 October 1936 – 18 December 2011) was a Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright, and dissident.[1][2] Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until 1992, prior to the dissolution of Czechoslovakia on 31 December, before he became the first president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003. He was the first democratically elected president of either country after the fall of communism. As a writer of Czech literature, he is known for his plays, essays and memoirs.
His educational opportunities having been limited by his bourgeois background, when freedoms were limited by the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, Havel first rose to prominence as a playwright. In works such as The Garden Party and The Memorandum, Havel used an absurdist style to criticize the Communist system. After participating in the
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Václav Havel: A Life Story
Havel was born in Czechoslovakia in 1936. As he turned 2, Hitler’s Germany invaded the country, occupying it until it was liberated by the Soviet Union and the United States at the end of World War II. But this liberation wouldn’t last long. A mere 3 years later, Communist plotters overthrew the democratically elected Czechoslovak government, rendering the country a puppet of Stalin and starting an oppressive reign that wouldn’t end for another 4 decades. The young Havel, in middle school at the time, saw the world around him change rapidly. All non-Communist-approved political and civic discourse was banned, most basic human rights were disregarded by the government, and anyone who spoke up against the new changes in the country was harassed, imprisoned, or killed. The property of Havel’s family was confiscated by the authorities, and Havel himself was rejected
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Family | 1936–1959
VH acquires his first literary and critical experience in the company of his peers, who call themselves the 36ers (Šestatřicátníci). Members include future key figures in Czech literature in the second half of the 20th century, among them Jiří Kuběna, Josef Topol, Věra Linhartová, Viola Fischerová, Jan Zábrana and others. He gradually establishes contact with other groups and individuals active in the “alternative“ culture (Jiří Kolář, Vladimír Holan, Jaroslav Seifert and others) not supported by the communist regime. VH composes four manuscript collections of poetry and writes literary reflections and critiques.
Our soul is a kind of sculpture that we repair, modify and refine our whole life. Progress is the best sign of life and only he who is constantly making progress is really living. From a young person’s first awakening from the dream of childhood to the last act of a dying old man, life is nothing but sculptural, constructivist work. It is a sign of decline if we think sometimes that we have reached a stage of completion and can now only dispense large
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