Vaclav Havel - Washington DC
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ToRo61
N 38° 53.388 W 077° 00.531
18S E 325772 N 4306465
This bust is located in National Statuary Hall. it was added to the Capitol’s Freedom Foyer, joining Winston Churchill, Lajos Kossuth, Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington.
Waymark Code: WMRZF0
Location: District of Columbia, United States
Date Posted: 08/28/2016
Views: 3
Václav Havel (5 October 1936 – 18 December 2011) was a Czech writer, philosopher, dissident, and statesman. From 1989 to 1992, he served as the last president of Czechoslovakia. He then served as the first president of the Czech Republic (1993–2003) after the Czech–Slovak split. Within Czech literature, he is known for his plays, essays, and memoirs.
His educational opportunities limited by his bourgeois background, Havel first rose to prominence within the Prague theater world as a playwright. Havel used the absurdist style in works such as The Garden Party and The Memorandum to critique communism. After participating in Prague Spring and being blacklisted after the invasion of Czechoslovakia, he became more politically active and helped found several dissident initiatives such as Charter 77 and the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted. His political activities brought him under the surveillance of the secret police and he spent multiple stints in prison, the longest being nearly four years, between 1979 and 1983.
On 29 December 1989, while he was leader of the Civic Forum, Havel became President of Czechoslovakia by a unanimous vote of the Federal Assembly. He had long insisted that he was not interested in politics and had argued that political change in the country should be induced through autonomous civic initiatives rather than through the official institutions. In 1990, soon after his election, Havel was awarded the Prize For Freedom of the Liberal International.
Havel was among those influential politicians who contributed most to the transition of NATO from being an anti-Warsaw Pact alliance to its present form. Havel advocated vigorously for the inclusion of former-Warsaw Pact members, like the Czech Republic, into the Western alliance. Havel was re-elected president in 1998.
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The bust was added to the Capitol’s Freedom Foyer. The author of the bust is Czech-American sculptor Lubomir Janecka. The bronze bust is 70 cm high and it is placed on granite pedestal cca 1,5m high.