Vaclav Havel Died.

Vaclav Havel didn't die while I was in the Czech Republic (he died 18 December 2011) but his death overshadowed the whole trip, both literally and figuratively.



There was an official period of morning from the 20th to the 23rd.  When I was at a theater performance, there was a moment of silence before the start but I didn't understand why until later because, as it was in Czech, I only understood the word "prezident."





Vaclav Havel was a dissident under the Soviet rule over the Czech Republic.  He was imprisoned for his seditious views.  He was also a playwright and composer.  He was a leader in the Velvet Revolution, which ultimately resulted in the release of Czechoslovakia from Soviet control.  He was then president of Czechoslovakia and later of the independent Czech Republic.  From  what I could tell, the American equivalent might be if you mixed up Patrick Henry, Elvis Presley, and Martin Luther King, Jr. into one person and made him president.  


He was also an international celebrity and symbol of national self-identity.  Madeline Albright, who is apparently of Czech descent, especially liked him.  On Friday the 23rd there was a massive state funeral for Havel at St. Vitus's Cathedral (which meant that the entire Prague Castle complex was shut down and under tight security).  Dignitaries from all kinds of different countries came to the funeral.  Bill and Hillary Clinton came, as did Madeline Albright, as did (I heard) presidents from 17 different nations.  I heard that the only major political figures who did not attend were the president of Russia (which people saw as understandable, kinda) and President Obama (which people saw as kind of a slap in the face).


Understandably, I suppose, not everyone was equally as enthusiastic about Havel.  The Young Communist party (which I understand gets about 10% of the votes during elections most years) released a statement saying that Havel was an enemy of the people and that he ought not to be celebrated.  There are also persistent questions about Havel's rise to power--how did he walk out of jail and into a presidency? and also concerns about corruption amongst some of his friends and the colleagues of his presidency.  It seemed like most people, however, were interested in remembering Havel fondly.  





There was a large memorial to Havel at the Wenceslas Monument at the top of Wensceslas Square.  The monument is a statue of Good King Wenceslas and of the four patron saints of the Czech Republic which made it the ideal place to memorialize a national hero.




The statue and ground all around it were covered with candles and notes.  










This note is a quotation from Ecclesiastes 7:1--


"A good name is better than precious ointment and the day of death than the day of one's birth."










This one is one of Vaclav Havel's own quotations--


"Hope is a state of mind.  It is a certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."






A lot of people included hearts on their notes, or just put up a picture of a heart because, apparently, Havel used to usually include a little heart on his 
autographs.















There were smaller memorials all over the place as well.  This is a statue of Karel Havlicek Borovsky.  Havlicek is the diminutive form of Havel and, since Borovsky was a Czech Nationalist hero during the mid-nineteenth century, there was a connection made between Havel and Havlicek.  That is presumably why this statue in Kutna Hora was the background for a memorial.  










There were also smaller memorials around the city, set up in neighborhood announcement sites.  


This one looks like it was made out of someone's scrapbook pages.








These flags were flying in front of a Czech Ministry of some kind.  The red, white, and blue flag is the Czech national flag.  I assume that the black flag is flying in memorium for Havel.












Shortly before his death, Havel had a photo shoot to commemorate his 75th birthday.  In fact, when I looked at a list of "things to do in Prague", there was a photo exhibition of the photos from this shoot which was set up in the end of October.  The giant photo which is being mounted on the front of the museum at the top of this post is one of the pictures from that display.  There was also another photo which was displayed everywhere.  It is a picture of Havel walking away, across a beach, just leaving his footprints behind.  It is quite evocative.