Ammo.coms
unsung heroes are generally impressive figures. But there are very few one might accurately call cool." This is an exception.
Vclav Havel the founder of the modern-day
Czech Republic (also known as
Czechia) is undoubtedly cool by any definition of the word. A political dissident under the Soviet-backed regime he served hard time in Communist prisons rather than bend the knee to their authority. His moral courage acted as a beacon of hope for the entire resistance movement behind the Iron Curtain.
Havel was born in
Prague in 1936 to a wealthy and prominent family in then Czechoslovakia a nation newly independent from the
Austro-Hungarian Empire made up of the future Czechia and
Slovakia. His paternal line was comprised of real estate developers while his mother was the daughter of a famous diplomat and journalist. As one might imagine this did not make his life easy after the
Czechoslovakian Communist coup detat of 1948.
Indeed the new Communist regime dictated his life path largely on the basis of his class background. He took gymnasium classes while working as an apprentice chemical lab assistant. Due to political and social reasons none of the post-secondary humanities programs would accept him as a student. He was accepted into a prestigious economics program but dropped out after two years. He entered into compulsory military service in 1957 and left in 1959.
Being a member of a formerly well-to-do family most avenues in the arts and academia were closed off to Havel. However it was his familys deep roots in the cultural and intellectual community of Czechia that guided his final chapter in life as the leader of the resistance to Soviet and Communist domination over Czechoslovakia and later the peaceful separation between Czechia and Slovakia.
From Playwright to Presidency
Official avenues into the arts were largely closed off to him however Havel was an innovative and enterprising young man. He took work as a stagehand to learn the craft of theater from behind the scenes while he took dramatic arts courses through the mail. He won international acclaim with his first full-length play
The Garden Party presented as part of a series on the
Theater of the Absurd. In 1968 his second play
The Memorandum was featured at The Public Theater in New York which further helped to solidify his reputation on the international scene.
1968 was also the year of the
Prague Spring a time of greater openness within Czechoslovakia which had always been the Soviet satellite least under the thumb of the Soviet Union. However at the end of the Prague Spring tanks from five different
Warsaw Pact nations (
the Soviet Union Bulgaria East Germany Poland and
Hungary Romania and
Albania refused to participate) rolled into
Czechoslovakia putting an end to this period of liberalization. Havels plays were banned from being performed in the country and he was forbidden from traveling abroad which meant that he could not see his own work being performed.
It was during the Prague Spring that Havels identity began to take on more of the character of political dissident than of artist. He was the voice of
Radio Free Czechoslovakia during the early weeks of the Prague Spring. After the suppression of the Spring he took a job in a brewery to make ends meet. He wrote plays about his experiences during this time that were later called
the Vaněk Plays" after the protagonist who is essentially a stand-in for Havel.
Continue reading
Vaclav Havel: The Forgotten History of the Political Dissident Who Founded the Czech Republic at
Ammo.com.
