Václav Havel

Biography

Václav Havel was born in Prague in 1936 into a wealthy family known for its business and cultural achievements. Because of this bourgeois background the communist regime kept him out of humanities programs, so he studied economics at the Czech Technical University for two years before dropping out. After military service he worked as a stagehand in Prague theatres, studied drama by correspondence at the Academy of Performing Arts, and wrote for the Theatre on the Balustrade, where absurdist plays such as The Garden Party and The Memorandum made his name abroad.

He took part in the Prague Spring and was banned from the theatre after the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion. He became a leading dissident, helping to found Charter 77 and, in 1979, the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted. Watched by the StB secret police, he was imprisoned several times, the longest term running from 1979 to 1983.

As head of Civic Forum during the 1989 Velvet Revolution, he was elected president of Czechoslovakia by the Federal Assembly on 29 December 1989 and re-elected the next year. He resigned in July 1992 rather than preside over the country's breakup, and in 1993 became the first president of the Czech Republic, serving until 2003. He helped dissolve the Warsaw Pact and backed NATO's expansion eastward, while his amnesty for prisoners and his stance on the expulsion of Sudeten Germans drew criticism at home.

After leaving office he remained a public intellectual, hosting the annual Forum 2000 conference and supporting the Czech Green Party. He died in 2011, and Prague's international airport was renamed after him in 2012.