Czechs mark 14 years since death of Václav Havel

People across the Czech Republic are marking the legacy of playwright, dissident, leading figure of the Velvet Revolution and the country’s first post-communist president, Václav Havel, on the 14th anniversary of his death.

The Václav Havel Library in Prague will remember Havel with humour and irony by staging one of his most successful plays, Vernissage. At the Havels’ family tomb at Vinohrady Cemetery, Senate Speaker Miloš Vystrčil and other members of the upper chamber of parliament will pay tribute to the former head of state. Commemorations will also take place at Hrádeček in the Trutnov region, where Havel had a country cottage and where he died on 18 December 2011 at the age of 75.

A playwright and former dissident, Havel was one of the key figures in the collapse of the communist regime in 1989. He served as the ninth and final president of Czechoslovakia and, after the country’s dissolution, as the first president of the Czech Republic. After leaving office in February 2003, he continued to comment on political and public affairs at home and abroad. His plays continue to be staged even 14 years after his death.