Václav Havel (5 October 1936 – 18 December 2011) was a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician.

A Nobel Peace Prize nominee, he was the ninth and last president of Czechoslovakia (1989 – 1992) and the first President of the Czech Republic (1993 – 2003). He wrote more than 20 plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally.

Havel was a founding signatory of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, that proposed the establishment of the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism. He also received the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Gandhi Peace Prize, the Philadelphia Liberty Medal, the Order of Canada, the freedom medal of the Four Freedoms Award, the Ambassador of Conscience Award and several other distinctions.

Havel was voted 4th in Prospect magazine's 2005 global poll of the world's top 100 intellectuals. At the time of his death he was Chairman of the New York based Human Rights Foundation. He also founded the VIZE97 Foundation and held the Forum 2000 annual global conference.

Havel was born in Prague on 5 October 1936 and grew up in a well known, wealthy entrepreneurial and intellectual family, which was closely linked to the cultural and political events in Czechoslovakia from the 1920s to the 1940s.

His father, Václav Maria Havel, was the owner of the suburban Barrandov Terraces, located on the highest point of Prague and of Barrandov film studios. Havel's mother, Božena Vavrečková, came from a well known family; her father was an ambassador and well known journalist. In the first part of the 1950s, the young Havel entered into a four year apprenticeship as a chemical laboratory assistant and simultaneously took evening classes; he completed his secondary education in 1954. For political reasons, he was not accepted into any post secondary school with a humanities program; therefore, he opted to study at the Faculty of Economics of Czech Technical University in Prague but dropped out after two years. In 1964, Havel married Olga Šplíchalová.

The intellectual tradition of his family compelled Václav Havel to pursue the humanitarian values of Czech culture. After military service (1957 – 59), he worked as a stagehand in Prague (at the Theatre ABC – Divadlo ABC – and the Theatre On the Balustrade – Divadlo Na zábradlí) and studied drama by correspondence at the Theatre 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 Theatre 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 in succeeding 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 invasion of Czechoslovakia, Havel assisted the resistance by providing an on-air narrative via Radio Free Czechoslovakia station (at Liberec). Following the suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968, he was banned from the theater 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 dissident (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. (Havel had attended their trial, which centered on the group's non - conformity in having long hair, using obscenities in their music, and their overall involvement in the Czech underground). Havel co-founded the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted in 1979. His political activities resulted in multiple stays in prison, and constant government surveillance and questioning by the secret police (Státní bezpečnost). His longest stay in prison, from June 1979 to January 1984, is documented in letters to his wife that were later published as Letters to Olga.

He was famous for his essays, most particularly Power of the Powerless, in which he described a societal paradigm in which citizens were forced to "live within a lie" under the communist regime. In describing his role as a dissident, Havel wrote in 1979: "...we never decided to become dissidents. We have been transformed into them, without quite knowing how, sometimes we have ended up in prison without precisely knowing how. We simply went ahead and did certain things that we felt we ought to do, and that seemed to us decent to do, nothing more nor less."

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. This was an ironic turn in the fate of a man who had long insisted that he was not interested in politics. As many other dissidents of the previous period of Communist rule, he 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.

Following the first free elections in Czechoslovakia in 1990, Havel retained his presidency. Despite increasing political tensions between the Czechs and the Slovaks in 1992, Havel supported the retention of the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic prior to the dissolution of the country. On 3 July 1992, the Federal Parliament did not elect Havel, who was the only candidate, due to a lack of support from Slovak deputies. The largest Czech political party, the Civic Democratic Party, let it be known that it would not support any other candidate. After the Slovaks issued their Declaration of Independence, he resigned as President on 20 July, saying that he would not preside over the country's breakup. However, when the Czech Republic was created as one of the two succession states, he stood for election as its President on 26 January 1993, and he was elected. Unlike in Czechoslovakia, he was then no more the Czech Republic's chief executive.

Havel's popularity abroad surpassed his popularity at home, and he was often object of controversy and criticism. During his time in office, Havel went as far as to state that the expulsion of the indigenous Sudeten German population after World War II was immoral, causing a great controversy at home. His extensive general amnesty was one of his first acts as President. It was an attempt to lessen the pressure in overcrowded prisons as well as to release political prisoners and persons who may have been falsely imprisoned during the Communist era. He had felt that many of the decisions of the previous regime´s courts should not be trusted, and that most of those in prison had not received fair trials. On the other hand, his critics claimed that this amnesty led to a significant increase in the crime rate. According to Havel's memoir To the Castle and Back, most of those who were released had less than a year to serve before their sentences ended. Statistics have not lent clear support to either claim.

In an interview with Karel Hvížďala (included in To the Castle and Back), Havel expressed his feeling that it was his most important accomplishment as President to have contributed to the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. According to his statement the dissolution was very complicated. The infrastructure created by the Warsaw Pact was part of the economies of all member states, so that it took for example two years for Soviet troops to fully withdraw from Czechoslovakia.

Following a legal dispute with his sister - in - law Dagmar Havlová (wife of his brother Ivan M. Havel), Havel decided to sell his 50% stake in the Lucerna Palace on Wenceslas Square in Prague, built from 1907 to 1921 by his grandfather, also named Václav Havel (spelled Vácslav,) one of the multifunctional "palaces" in the center of the once booming pre - World War I Prague. In a transaction arranged by Marián Čalfa, Havel sold the estate to Václav Junek, a former communist spy in France and leader of the soon - to - be - bankrupt conglomerate Chemapol Group, who later openly admitted that he bribed politicians of the Czech Social Democratic Party.

In December 1996, Havel who had been a chain smoker for a long time, was diagnosed with lung cancer. The disease reappeared two years later. He quit smoking. In 1996, Olga, his wife of 32 years, died of cancer at 63. In 1997, he remarried, to actress Dagmar Veškrnová.

Havel was among those influential politicians who contributed most to the transition of NATO from being an anti - Warsaw Pact alliance to its present shape. 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. He had to undergo a colostomy in Innsbruck when his colon ruptured while he was on holiday in Austria. Havel left office after his second term as Czech president ended on 2 February 2003. Václav Klaus, one of his greatest political adversaries, was elected his successor as President on 28 February 2003. Margaret Thatcher wrote of the two men in her foreign policy treatise Statecraft, reserving greater respect for Havel. Havel´s dedication to democracy and his steadfast opposition to the Communist ideology earned her admiration.

Beginning in 1997, Havel hosted Forum 2000, an annual conference to "identify the key issues facing civilization and to explore ways to prevent the escalation of conflicts that have religion, culture or ethnicity as their primary components". In 2005, the former President occupied the Kluge Chair for Modern Culture at the John W. Kluge Center of the United States Library of Congress, where he continued his research on human rights. In November and December 2006, Havel spent eight weeks as a visiting artist in residence at Columbia University. The stay was sponsored by the Columbia Arts Initiative and featured "performances, and panels center[ing] on his life and ideas", including a public "conversation" with former U.S. President Bill Clinton. Concurrently, the Untitled Theater Company No. 61 launched a Havel Festival, the first complete festival of his plays in various venues throughout New York City, including The Brick Theater and the Ohio Theatre, in celebration of his 70th birthday.

Havel was a member of the World Future Society and addressed the Society's members on 4 July 1994. His speech was later printed in THE FUTURIST magazine (July, 1995).

Havel's memoir of his experience as President, To the Castle and Back, was published in May 2007. The book mixes an interview in the style of Disturbing the Peace with actual memoranda he sent to his staff with modern diary entries and recollections.

On 4 August 2007, Havel met with members of the Belarus Free Theatre at his summer cottage in the Czech Republic in a show of his continuing support, which has been instrumental in the theater's attaining international recognition and membership in the European Theatrical Convention.

Havel's first new play in almost two decades, Odcházení (Leaving), was published in November 2007, and was to have had its world premiere in June 2008 at the Prague theater Divadlo na Vinohradech, but the theater withdrew it in December as it felt it could not provide the technical support needed to mount the play. The play instead premiered on 22 May 2008 at the Archa Theatre to standing ovations. Havel based the play on King Lear, by William Shakespeare, and on The Cherry Orchard, by Anton Chekhov; "Chancellor Vilém Rieger is the central character of Leaving, who faces a crisis after being removed from political power." The play had its English language premiere at the Orange Tree Theatre in London and its American premiere at The Wilma Theater in Philadelphia. Havel subsequently directed a film version of the play, which premiered in the Czech Republic on 22 March 2011.

Other works included the short sketch Pět Tet, a modern sequel to Unveiling, and The Pig, or Václav Havel's Hunt for a Pig, which was premiered in Brno at Theatre Goose on a String and had its English language premiere in June 2011 at the 3LD Art & Technology Center in New York, in a production from Untitled Theater Company no. 61.

In 2008, Havel became Member of the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation. He met with U.S. President Barack Obama in private before Obama´s departure after the end of the European Union (EU) and United States (US) summit in Prague in April 2009.

Havel was the chair of the Human Rights Foundation's International Council and a member of the international advisory council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

From the 1980s Havel supported the green politics movement (partly due to his friendship with the co-founder of the German Die Grünen party Milan Horáček).

From 2004 until his death he supported the Czech Green Party.

Havel died on 18 December 2011, aged 75, at his country home in Hrádeček.

A week before his death, he met with longtime friend, the Dalai Lama, in Prague; Havel appeared in a wheelchair. Within hours Havel's death was met with numerous tributes, including from U.S. President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former Polish President Lech Wałęsa. Merkel called Havel "a great European", while Wałęsa said he should have been given the Nobel Peace Prize.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a native of Czechoslovakia, said, "He was one of the great figures of the 20th Century", while Czech expatriate novelist Milan Kundera said, "Václav Havel's most important work is his own life."

Prime Minister Petr Nečas announced a three - day mourning period from Wednesday, 21 December to Friday, 23 December, the date announced by President Václav Klaus for the state funeral. The funeral Mass was held at Saint Vitus Cathedral, celebrated by the Archbishop of Prague Dominik Duka and Havel’s old friend Bishop Václav Maly. During the service, a 21 gun salute was fired in the former president’s honor, and as per the family’s request, a private ceremony followed at the crematorium in Strašnice, Prague, and Havel’s ashes were placed in the family tomb in the Vinohrady Cemetery in Prague. On 23 December 2011 the Václav Havel Tribute Concert was held in Prague's Palác Lucerna.

By contrast, Czech Communist Party leader Vojtech Filip stated that Havel was very controversial and that his words often conflicted with his deeds. He criticized Havel for having supported NATO's war against Yugoslavia, which Havel called a "humanitarian bombing". In response to his death, the Czech Young Communists wrote on their web page, "Nation celebrate! Vaclav Havel, a lackey of the United States, NATO, Sudeten Germans and Israel, has died. The biggest traitor of the Czech people has died! Vaclav Havel, an accomplice in the bombing of Yugoslavia, an accomplice in the murder of 2500 civilians, has died. Down with traitors!"

An online petition organized by one of the best known Czech and Slovak film director, Fero Fenic, calling on the government and the Parliament to rename Prague Ruzyně Airport to Vaclav Havel International Airport attracted - just in a week after 20 December 2011 - a support of over 65,000 signatories both within and outside of the Czech Republic. A rendition of the airport with the proposed Vaclav Havel's name in a form of his signature along with his typical heart symbol after it is included in a blog's article in support of re-naming of the airport.

On 4 July 1994, Václav Havel was awarded the Philadelphia Liberty Medal. In his acceptance speech, he said: "The idea of human rights and freedoms must be an integral part of any meaningful world order. Yet I think it must be anchored in a different place, and in a different way, than has been the case so far. If it is to be more than just a slogan mocked by half the world, it cannot be expressed in the language of departing era, and it must not be mere froth floating on the subsiding waters of faith in a purely scientific relationship to the world."

In 1997, Havel received the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities and the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca.

In 2002, he was the third recipient of the Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award presented by the Prague Society for International Cooperation. In 2003, he was awarded the International Gandhi Peace Prize by the government of India for his outstanding contribution towards world peace and upholding human rights in most difficult situations through Gandhian means; he was the inaugural recipient of Amnesty International's Ambassador of Conscience Award for his work in promoting human rights; he received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom; and he was appointed as an honorary Companion of the Order of Canada.

In January 2008, the Europe based A Different View cited Havel to be one of the 15 Champions of World Democracy. As a former Czech President, Havel was a member of the Club of Madrid. In 2009 he was awarded the Quadriga Award, but decided to return it in 2011 following the announcement of Vladimir Putin as one of the 2011 award recipients.

Havel also received multiple honorary doctorates from various universities such as the prestigious Institut d'études politiques de Paris in 2009.

On 10 October 2011 Havel was awarded by the Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili with St. George Victory Order.

In 1993, he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

• Havel was a major supporter of The Plastic People of the Universe, and close friend of its leader, Milan Hlavsa, its manager, Ivan Martin Jirous, and its guitarist / vocalist, Paul Wilson (who later became Havel's English translator and biographer) and a great fan of the rock band The Velvet Underground, sharing mutual respect with the principal singer - songwriter Lou Reed, and was also a lifelong Frank Zappa fan.
• Havel was also a great supporter and fan of jazz and frequented such Prague clubs as Radost FX and the Reduta Jazz Club, where U.S. President Bill Clinton played the saxophone when Havel brought him there.
• The period involving Havel's role in the Velvet Revolution and his ascendancy to the presidency is dramatized in part in the play Rock 'n' Roll, by Czechoslovakia born English playwright Tom Stoppard. One of the characters in the play is called Ferdinand, in honor of Ferdinand Vaněk, the protagonist of three of Havel's plays and a Havel stand-in.
• In 1996, due to his contributions to the arts, he was honorably mentioned in the rock opera Rent during the song "La Vie Boheme", though his name was mispronounced on the original soundtrack.
• Samuel Beckett's 1982 short play, Catastrophe, was dedicated to Havel while he was held as a political prisoner in Czechoslovakia.
• In David Weber's Honor Harrington series, a genetic slave turned freedom fighter (and later Prime Minister of a planet of freed slaves) names himself "W.E.B. du Havel" in honor of his two favorite writers on the subject of freedom, W.E.B. du Bois and Havel.