Playwright Vaclav Halvel Dies Aged 75
Renowned Czech playwright Vaclav Havel, who is credited with helping bring down communism, has died at the age of 75.
Havel passed away at his weekend house in northern Czech Republic Sunday morning, according to his assistant, Sabina Dancecova.
While acting as one of the leading dissidents against communism, Havel was long admired for his way of weaving politics and theater into his plays.
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Born in 1936, to a prominent and wealthy family, Havel was denied a good education after the communists seized power in 1948 and stripped the family of its wealth. For political reasons he was not allowed a formal education. Despite the lack of higher education he wrote his first literary criticism in 1955.
His plays were banned for two decades and he was thrown into prison several times after launching Charter 77 in 1977. The manifesto demanded the communist government adhere to international standards for human rights. He would be subsequently jailed several times over the next few decades.
Havel used the momentum of the Velvet Revolution in 1989 to become Czechoslovakia's first democratically elected president. Emerging from four decades of communist repression, Havel oversaw the country's turbulent transition to democracy.
Havel’s work as an opponent of communism led him to reluctantly lead a free Czech Republic. While in office he resigned before the split of Czechoslovakia in 1992.
"He did not want to be a president," said Petruska Sustrova, a prominent Czech dissident and one of the first to sign Charter 77. "Ideally, he wanted to sit in a pub and reconcile quarrels. He was not very keen to enter politics, he thought it would cut him off from the normal world," according to Reuters.
In 2008, Havel returned to his first passion, the stage, when we wrote Leaving about a leader who was in the twilight of his career.
“My return to the stage was not easy. It's not a common thing for someone to be involved in theater, become a president, and then go back," he told the AP.
