The last Czechoslovak and the first Czech President, Václav Havel was born to a prominent entrepreneurial and intellectual family in Prague in October 1936. The family owned several properties in Prague, such as Lucerna Palace, completed shortly after WWI near St. Wenceslas Square. Today, you can visit a famous café, a cinema or see a concert in Lucerna. In 2000, the popular “Horse” sculpture by David Černý was suspended from the ceiling of the Lucerna arcade, which is a controversial adaptation of the sculpture of St. Wenceslas at the Square.

Václav Havel spent his childhood in the country during WWII. When he was eleven, he became a student at a boarding school in Poděbrady and, after some difficulties, he finally passed the final examinations at the Academic Grammar School in Štěpánská Street in Prague in 1954. He did not find university studies at the faculty of economics fulfilling, so he signed on for compulsory military service. When he returned to civil life in 1959, he finally discovered an environment he completely fell in love with – the Prague theatres.

Havel, the theatre enthusiast

His work in the Na Zábradlí Theatre was most distinctive. Even though Havel started as a stage technician, he soon became a playwright, and later an assistant director. In 1963, the Na Zábradlí Theatre featured his play “The Garden Party”. The Theatre continues to feature Havel’s plays, even with English subtitles, and their production about the life of the former President, Velvet Havel, has received several awards. If you go to the theatre, do not miss the nearby Slavia Café, which became the centre of dissident intelligence after the 1968 invasion.

Life after Charter 77

The invasion of the Soviet Army and the following normalisation became a harsh reality, changing the fates of many people, Václav Havel included. He endeavoured to warn of the violation of human rights in Czechoslovakia from his position of a “freelance” author. Charter 77 was a fundamental document that Havel presented to the outside world as a co-author and press agent. The punishment of the official power did not wait long. In 1979, Václav Havel was sentenced to four and a half years jail time without suspension for the subversion of the republic.

The persecution and permanent pressure on Václav Havel in the 1980s did not prevent him from getting involved as an author and a playwright. Václav Havel became the symbol of Charter 77 members, as well as the Czech dissent, thanks to the substantial support from abroad, where the plays he wrote during normalisation were featured (e.g. “Mountain Hotel, “Largo desolato” and “Temptation”). In the 1980s, Václav Havel lived at Rašínovo nábřeží, next to today’s iconic Dancing House. The idea to build something on an empty plot due to WWII bombing came from a meeting of Havel and architect Vlado Milunic in 1986. The “Ginger and Fred” project was carried out by the famous Frank O. Gehry in the 1990s.   

1989

On 17 November 1989, the regime of the Communist Party took harsh action against a student demonstration at Národní třída. The event is commemorated by a memorial at Kaňka Palace, where the police brutally attacked the students. People started protesting against police brutality, which led to demonstrations and strikes in many cities in Czechoslovakia. The communists gave up their self-entitled absolute political power during the Velvet Revolution. The regime was burnt out and did not have the power to fight the whole of society. Political parties were restored and the first free election took place in 1990. Václav Havel became the President and also led the negotiations with the representatives of the communist government. He remained in this function for almost thirteen years, at a time of very difficult change during the process of building a democratic state.