Václav Havel has died.

[Byron In Exile]

http://www.celeceskoctedetem.cz/userdata/articles/27/_lv_9372.jpg

President of Czechoslovakia: 29 December 1989 – 20 July 1992

First President of the Czech Republic: 2 February 1993 – 2 February 2003

Pretty neat guy: 5 October 1936 — 18 December 2011

ab Wiki:

After military service (1957–59), he worked as a stagehand in Prague (at the Theater On the Balustrade – Divadlo Na zábradlí) and studied drama by correspondence at the Theater Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (DAMU). His first publicly performed full-length play, besides various vaudeville collaborations, was The Garden Party (1963). Presented in a season of Theater of the Absurd, at the Balustrade, it won him international acclaim. It was soon followed by The Memorandum, one of his best known plays, and the The Increased Difficulty of Concentration, all at the Balustrade. In 1968, The Memorandum was also brought to The Public Theater in New York, which helped establish his reputation in the United States. The Public continued to produce his plays over the next years, although after 1968 his plays were banned in his own country, Havel was unable to leave Czechoslovakia to see any foreign performances.

During the first week of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, Havel provided a commentary on the events on Radio Free Czechoslovakia in Liberec. Following the suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968 he was banned from the theatre and became more politically active. He was forced to take a job in a brewery, an experience he wrote about in his play Audience. This play, along with two other "Vaněk" plays (so-called because of the recurring character Ferdinand Vaněk, a stand in for Havel), became distributed in samizdat form across Czechoslovakia, and greatly added to Havel's reputation of being a leading revolutionary (several other Czech writers later wrote their own plays featuring Vaněk). This reputation was cemented with the publication of the Charter 77 manifesto, written partially in response to the imprisonment of members of the Czech psychedelic band The Plastic People of the Universe detained for their involvement with the Czech underground. He co-founded the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Persecuted in 1979. His political activities resulted in multiple stays in prison, and constant government surveillance and questioning. His longest stay in prison, from June 1979 to January 1984, is documented in Letters to Olga, his late wife.

He was famous for his essays, most particularly for his articulation of "Post-Totalitarianism" (Power of the Powerless), a term used to describe the modern social and political order that enabled people to "live within a lie." In this essay Havel took issue with the concept of the 'dissident' as such, arguing that it is mainly a prescription attached to certain practices that are not by their authors categorized as dissident behaviour: one becomes a dissident mainly through the interpretation of one's behaviour by others. A passionate supporter of non-violent resistance, a role in which he has been compared, by former US President Bill Clinton, to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., he became a leading figure in the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the bloodless end to communism in Czechoslovakia.

 

[where]

ahhhh sad. a great guy.

 

[Liar]

Well bugger. I guess that balances out the good news / bad news quota for today in the death-of-a-stateman category.

He was a guest lecturer at my uni, and I had the opportunity for a short chat. A genuine fella, and funny as hell. Calls for a Staropramen toast in his honor tonight.

 

[Byron In Exile]

Well bugger. I guess that balances out the good news / bad news quota for today in the death-of-a-stateman category.

I was so thinking that at first.

But then I thought, no, probably ten or twelve Kim Jong Il's should have died if it were a matter of balance.

 

[Liar]

Good point.

 

[HB1965]

Sad news indeed.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Sad but not tragic, for a statesman/artist simply to die of old-age natural causes, while in retirement, at the end of a truly amazing artistic career and an even more amazing political career that left him firmy established as one of his country's national heroes for all time.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Sad but not tragic, for a statesman/artist simply to die of old-age natural causes, while in retirement, at the end of a truly amazing artistic career and an even more amazing political career that left him firmy established as one of his country's national heroes for all time.

Agreed. A life well lived.

 

[Wok]

Viva Velvet Revolution. RIP

 

[busybody..]

why does Bree Ann keep posting one boring thread after another

questions are being AXED

 

[KingOrfeo]

Agreed. A life well lived.

And he did the whole great-statesman thing without ever, AFAIK, killing anyone, or ordering anyone killed, or making any decision that led to killing.

 

[Sinny]

In one of the obits I read this morning, there was a minute detail I found really compelling. He sometimes signed his name with a little heart as a flourish. Would love to see that.

 

[Peregrinator]

I was so thinking that at first.

But then I thought, no, probably ten or twelve Kim Jong Il's should have died if it were a matter of balance.

I'd judge it balanced if someone knocked off the "leaders" of Burma.

 

[Peregrinator]

In one of the obits I read this morning, there was a minute detail I found really compelling. He sometimes signed his name with a little heart as a flourish. Would love to see that.

http://www.collect.at/images/med_col-7422.jpg

https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.charitybuzz.com/images/44557/detail.JPG?1314119545

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/13/16926812_39dc4b3c95.jpg

 

[EllieTalbot]

Viva Velvet Revolution. RIP