Prague, Nov 17 (CTK) – Our Vaclav Havel, a book of interviews with outstanding personalities of Czech society who knew the former Czechoslovak and Czech president and dissident, was launched on the anniversary of the 1989 Velvet Revolution in Prague on Thursday.
The questions were asked by journalists Jan Drazan and Jan Pergler. They also related to the milestones of Czechoslovak and Czech history of the past half a century.
“When preparing the book, we had the feeling that we want to claim Havel’s legacy and to say that he is our hero,” Pergler said.
“For us, Vaclav Havel remains the biggest figure of Czech, Czechoslovak and global history and we wanted to thank him in this way,” Pergler added.
“We chose 29 figures who had a contact with Havel for some time, asking them how he was and what is his legacy,” he added.
Some of the respondents took part in the ceremony. They included Prague Archbishop Cardinal Dominik Duka, architect Miroslav Masak who worked at the Prague Castle when Havel was the president, Havel’s secretary Vladimir Hanzel, presidential candidate Michal Horacek, former defence minister and dissident Alexandr Vondra, former ambassador to Russia and dissident Lubos Dobrovsky, and Slovak dissident and activist Fedor Gal.
The recollections date back to the 1960s when Havel made his mark as a playwright and intellectual, continuing through the 1970s and 1980s, when he was an informal dissident leader, the breakthrough in 1989 and his indispensable role in the Velvet Revolution.
The book also describes his performance of the presidential post and his last days before he died in 2011.
