Staňte se členy Klubu přátel Knihovny VH“It was a time of continuous and glorious surprises, a time of great improvisation, a time of collective imagination. Suddenly people were once again able to be together” Václav Havel, November 21, 2016
Club / News / Program
Conference Global Challenges to Liberal Thought 28/01/20
Dear guests, Due to organisational reasons on the side of our partner, we are obliged to postpone the conference "Global Challenges to Liberal Thought" on 31 January and 1 February to which you have registered. We will inform you about the new date in advance. We apologize for any inconvenience and we are looking forward to seeing you at some other event at our premises. Václav Havel Library Team
Support Hong Kong with 5 fingers raised! 10/12/19
On 10 December 2019, Human Rights Day, the Vaclav Havel Library is launching a Facebook happening to support the protesters in Hong Kong. We call upon everyone to upload their photographs with their 5 fingers raised under this Facebook event. More
It’s here again – the Velvet Weekend is coming! 06/11/19
Do you recall that time of euphoria? Thirty years ago when the Czech and Slovak nation united and said a clear NO to the Communist government? Let’s celebrate this round anniversary together and remember Václav Havel, the first democratically elected president of Czechoslovakia after 1989. More
Ilham Tohti wins Sakharov Prize 25/10/19
The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, bestowed by the European Parliament, has gone to Ilham Tohti, a professor of mathematics at a Beijing university. He received the award for his long-term efforts to improve the situation of China’s Uyghur minority. The announcement was made by the president of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, at its plenary session. Ilham Tohti is also the laureate of this year’s Václav Havel Human Rights Prize, though he was unable to collect it in person as he has been in jail for five years. He received a life sentence for separatism in 2014 and his family have had no direct contact with him for three years.
Program for February 2020<>
A Christian Struggle – Anastáz Opasek and Opus Bonum
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: February 6, 2020, 19:00 – 21:00
Petr Placák will introduce his new book Křesťanský zápas o českou věc – Působení opata Opaska a organizace Opus bonum v čs. exilu (A Christian Struggle with a Czech Focus – Abbot Opasek’s Activities and the Opus Bonum Organisation in the Czechoslovak Exile Community). The book explores one of the most notable anti-communist initiatives when thanks to their openness a broad variety of streams in the exile community managed to come together via the Roman Catholic Church. These included conservatives, liberals and greens, as well as former Communists, members of the Czech nobility, representatives of the Czechoslovak underground, Catholics and Evangelicals and activists of Jewish origin.
Guests at the book’s launch will include the writer Ivan Binar, Dana Němcová, Vienna pub operator Jiří Chmel and Radio Free Europe editor Martin Schulz.
Dáša Vokatá will conclude the evening by singing the exiles’ anthem.
Václav Havel: The Memorandum
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: February 10, 2020, 19:00 – 21:00
The theatre group at Prague’s Jan Neruda Gymnasium will perform the play, directed by Filip H. Härtel.
The protagonist of The Memorandum (1965) is not a particular individual but ptydepe, an omnipresent – yet elusive, incomprehensible and unmanageable – artificial language. Václav Havel demonstrates language’s immense power over mankind. Over our thoughts, actions and attitudes. But above all, he shows how easy it is to become part of such an artificial and ultimately nonsensical and aimless system in which we can in the end lose ourselves.
Debate with Respekt
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: February 11, 2020, 19:00 – 21:00
Discussion involving editors from the weekly Respekt and their guests on a topical issue. For more information visit www.Václavhavel.cz
Czech Hoaxes – The Green Mountain and Queen’s Court Manuscripts Within Us
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: February 12, 2020, 17:00 – 19:00
How did it come to pass that among the key symbols in the shaping of modern Czech identity were hoaxes that, what’s more, also represented the Czechs in 19th century Europe? Were contemporary journalists who claimed that the entire Czech National Revival was built on a lie correct? How did Czechs encounter and contend with these hoaxes? And how is that clash instructive today in the 21st century, when eternal national identity is again a political issue and new techniques of manipulating it are being employed?
Czech historical fictions and hoaxes, their role and how to come to terms with them in art and public life will be among the issues discussed by Miroslav Pudlák, writer of the opera Sasíci v Čechách aneb marnost boje proti RKZ (The Saxons in Bohemia, or the Pointlessness of the Struggle Against the Green Mountain Manuscript) and the authors of the monograph Rukopisy královédvorský a zelenohorský v kultuře a umění (The Queen’s Court and Green Mountain Manuscripts in Culture and Art) (Academia 2019).
The event will be moderated by Dalibor Dobiáš from the Institute for Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
Argo Publishing House Presents
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: February 13, 2020, 19:00 – 21:00
Five Czech novelists who publish on the Argo imprint will present their latest works. The writers will also discuss revolutionary changes in the method/quantity/quality of reading today and the influence of readers’ new habits on their art, the need for fantasy in real life, the necessity of knocking the realist novel off its pedestal and the motivation and the passion of the author.
Kateřina Kadlecová, a journalist with the weekly Reflex, will chair this debate involving Argo publishing house authors Kateřina Blažková, Pavel Bušta, Vratislav Kadlec, Igor Malijevský and Michal Vrba.
Valerian Pidmohylny: The City
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: February 18, 2020, 19:00 – 21:00
An encounter with a Ukrainian cult novel translated into Czech by Miroslav Tomek. Valerian Pidmohylny’s The City is both an adventure and philosophical novel that stands up creditably, and playfully, within the context of European modernism. The story of a young man who leaves his native village to become an engineer and spread learning initially comes across as schematic, even naive. But only because the young man is himself naive. Will the city grind down the hero and rob him of his ideals? Yes and no. The city doesn’t respond to these questions but raises fresh ones. It forces the protagonist to encounter himself, to run up against his own desires and sexuality, to let himself down, to find a calling. It was just this ambivalence and non-schematic approach that saw the novel dubbed anti-Soviet. Its writer Pidmohylny (1901–1937) died during the purges.
Ukrainian Studies expert Tereza Chlaňová and poet Marie Iljašenko will discuss the difficulties of translating literary classics with translator Tomek.
Women on Women
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: February 19, 2020, 19:00 – 21:00
Twenty-eight interviews with 29 film and literary documentarians working in the Czech Republic have been published in the volume Ženy o ženách (Women on Women). In the book, author Barbora Baronová explores her interviewees’ artistic motivations, how they select themes and their relationship to key aspects of documentary work, such as censorship, engagement and therapy. Last but not least, she discusses with her subjects the issues of gender, the role of institutions in documentary work and financing.
The book contains interviews with novelist Petra Dvořáková, Slovak filmmaker Zuzana Piussi, writer Alena Wagnerová, artist and personal development instructor Tereza Tara, history professor Dana Musilová, filmmaker Helena Třeštíková, art theorist Michaela Peško Banzetová, ethnographer Eleanore Rasmussen, activist and documentary filmmaker Apolena Rychlíková, documentary filmmaker Olga Sommerová, sociologist Marcela Linková, journalist and author Judita Matyášová, journalist and humanitarian worker Petra Procházková and more.
Bára Šichanová will host the evening and helm a talk with Barbora Baronová.
How Kiev’s Maidan Changed Ukrainian Society
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: February 20, 2020, 19:00 – 21:00
On February 20 it is six years since the bloody events of the revolution of dignity at Kiev’s Maidan square. Its primary outcome was not political change in the country but first and foremost the birth of a strong civic society that has been an active participant in, or even initiator of, positive change in recent years. How did Ukraine change during and after the Maidan? How did former revolutionaries turn into reformers of their country, and how successful have they been?
Taking part in the debate will be historian and journalist Oleksandr Zinchenko, one of the most important Maidan activists (who also pushed through the renaming of a Kiev street as Václav Havel Street) and David Stulík, an analyst at the European Values think tank who served as press spokesperson of the European Commission in Kiev at the time of the Maidan.
Interpretation into Czech provided.
Faces of Normalisation
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: February 25, 2020, 19:00 – 21:00
Normalization has earned a reputation in society of being a bearable, “goulash” communism, during which people escaped to their cottage or the records of Karel Gott. In reality, it spelled years of devastation. Societal apathy, lethargy and unwillingness to accept liberty or responsibility were all rooted not in the gallows of the 1950s or Jáchymov’s Tower of Death, but in the regime brought in by Soviet tanks in August 1968. Precisely because of a creeping degradation of the spirit and will of the majority, it is worth remembering how tremendously evil and distorted the period was.
The book Tváře normalizace (Faces of Normalisation) has been brought out by Deník N as a contribution to the mosaic of understanding of the country’s past. The authors opted to tell specific human stories that, despite their specificity, deliver a stronger sense of the mechanisms and atmosphere of the time than academic studies. Together, the stories of the regime’s well-known and rank and file protagonists form a convincing portrait of that time.
The publication will be discussed by historian Libor Svoboda, writer Jiří Padevět and its editors Eliška Černá and Jan Wirnitzer.
Introduced by Ján Simkanič, director of publishers N Media.
Deník N journalist Jana Ustohalová will moderate.
Ostrava Book Festival
- Where: The Černá louka Exposition Grounds, Ostrava
- When: February 28, 2020, 10:00 – February 29, 2020, 18:00
Encounter with the Václav Havel Library at the largest book festival in the Moravian Silesian Region. The library’s publications and merchandise will be on sale.
An Orwellian Ministry of Truth? Debate on the Czechoslovak Judicial System of the 1950s
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: February 28, 2020, 17:00 – 19:00
Two new publications exploring the Czechoslovak judicial system of the 1950s, Lexikon nejvyšších představitelů československé justice a prokuratury v letech 1948–1989 (Lexicon of Senior Representatives of the Czechoslovak Judicial and Prosecution Systems, 1948–1989) and Ministerstvo spravedlnosti v letech 1948–1953 (The Ministry of Justice, 1948–1953), will be presented during this discussion with representatives of Charles University’s Faculty of Law and the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes.
Guests: historians Jaroslav Pažout and Adam Zítek and legal historians Lukáš Blažek, Ivana Bláhová and Daniela Němečková.
Organised by the Václav Havel Library in cooperation with the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes as part of the 14th edition of the Mene Tekel festival against totalitarianism, evil and violence and for national memory.
Screening of The Last Cyclist
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: February 28, 2020, 19:00 – 21:00
Virtually unknown in the Czech Republic, Karel Švenk’s satirical and allegorical cabaret comedy The Last Cyclist was created at the Terezín concentration camp but never made it past dress rehearsals.
Jana Šedová, who played Mánička, was the only original cast member to survive the Holocaust. In 1961, with the help of Darek Vostřel, she reconstructed it “from memory”. This version was the basis for a play by American writer Naomi Patz that has been performed many times, particularly at universities in the US and Mexico. A 2017 production by Edward Einhorn at the La MaMa Theater was filmed and will be presented to viewers – almost symbolically – at the Václav Havel Library.
Einhorn, a director and playwright, heads New York’s Untitled Theater #61: A Theater of Ideas, which he set up 25 years ago. His authorial and directorial focus has been marked by two passions: Jewish culture and Theatre of the Absurd. Both gradually led him also to Czech culture. In 2006 he organised the now legendary Havel Festival in New York, during which the complete plays of Václav Havel were performed, most with the author in attendance. Einhorn also organised a festival of Jewish theatre in New York in 2009.
Organised by the Václav Havel Library as part of the 14th edition of the Mene Tekel festival against totalitarianism, evil and violence and for national memory.
Publications / E-shop
The central focus of the Library’s publishing programme is the life and work of Václav Havel, his family and close collaborators and friends. For clarity, the programme is divided into six series: Václav Havel Library Notebooks, Václav Havel Library Editions, Student Line, Talks from Lány, Václav Havel Documents, Works of Pavel Juráček and Václav Havel Library Conferences. Titles that cannot be incorporated into any of the given series but which are nonetheless important for the Library’s publishing activities are issued independently, outside the series framework.
Conferences
Václav Havel European Dialogues
The Václav Havel European Dialogues is an international project that aims to initiate and stimulate a discussion about issues determining the direction of contemporary Europe while referring to the European spiritual legacy of Václav Havel. This idea takes its main inspiration from Václav Havel’s essay “Power of the Powerless”. More than other similarly focused projects, the Václav Havel European Dialogues aims to offer the “powerless” a platform to express themselves and in so doing to boost their position within Europe.
The Václav Havel European Dialogues is planned as a long-term project and involves cooperation with other organisations in various European cities. Individual meetings, which take the form of a conference, are targeted primarily at secondary and third-level students, as well as specialists and members of the public interested in European issues.
Prague 2020Mnichov 2020Brussels 2019Prague 2019Prague 2018Brussels 2018Europe at the Crossroads (e-book)Prague 2017Brussels 2017Prague 2016Brussels 2016Brussels 2015Prague 2015Brussels 2014Berlin 2014Prague 2014 - J. GauckBruges 2014Prague 2014
Václav Havel Human Rights Prize
The Václav Havel Human Rights Prize is awarded each year by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in partnership with the Václav Havel Library and the Charta 77 Foundation to reward outstanding civil society action in the defence of human rights in Europe and beyond.
8th Year of the Prize (2020)7th Year of the Prize (2019)6th Year of the Prize (2018)5th Year of the Prize (2017)4th Year of the Prize (2016)3rd Year of the Prize (2015)2nd Year of the Prize (2014)1st Year of the Prize (2013)History of the prize
Václav Havel
Educational projects
Man of inspiration
This six-part series of educational videos introduces young viewers to the most important events in Czechoslovak history in the second half of the 20th century, with an accent on the human rights struggle. It is presented by singer and TV moderator Emma Smetana and choreographer and producer Yemi. The presenters of the English versions are native speakers.
Year of Revolution
The year of the Velvet Revolution from the perspective of young YouTubers. A series of seven video lessons aimed at elementary and secondary schools mapping the revolutionary year from January to December 1989 and introducing viewers to key moments in totalitarian Czechoslovakia’s transformation into a democratic country.
Read Havel
A collection of short videos in which well-known young people in Czech public life present iconic and lesser-known texts by Václav Havel.
Václav Havel here and now
A travelling series of discussions about VH and more with Michael Žantovský, intended for secondary school students, libraries and arts centres.
Best Student Essay Competition
One of the key genres of Václav Havel’s work is essays – on literary, artistic, social, political, and spiritual topics. His essays, such as the The Power of the Powerless and A Word About Words, have become classic texts of Czech literature; they have been translated into tens of languages, and are among the few truly world-famous works of Czech culture. This is also why it is necessary to keep cultivating the essay genre in the Czech language – not in the sense of imitating Václav Havel’s writing, but in the spirit of his courage to name unpleasant problems and search for unconventional solutions to them. For this reason, the Václav Havel Library is announcing the next year of the literary competition for secondary students: the Václav Havel Library Prize for Best Student Essay.
Václav Havel´s Bookshelves
The Václav Havel Little Libraries are a key new Václav Havel Library project aimed at establishing a nationwide network of elementary and secondary schools that, with the support of the VHL, will spread the legacy of Václav Havel among their pupils and students. The aim of the Little Libraries is to create in schools (on the model of the existing Václav Havel’s Places) book shelves on which the schools will gather both texts by Václav Havel and texts closely linked to him. They may also contain other written materials, audio and video recordings and photographs.
Lets rock!
Are your students (whether at elementary, arts-focused elementary or secondary schools) interested in history? Do you have a theatre or film club at your school, or are you teaching young people who “just” like to act? If so, we cordially invite you to join the Václav Havel Library in celebrating in a creative manner the centenary of the foundation of Czechoslovakia with the theatre-education project Tomorrow!
Guided tour – Havel In A Nutshell
The Václav Havel Library’s permanent exhibition Havel In A Nutshell introduces pupils and students the life of Václav Havel through a collage of photographs and quotations. Touch screens make use of detailed information and sound recordings to place individual chapters – family, theatre, dissent and presidency – in a broad cultural-historical context, while a large interactive map creates a tangible sense of Václav Havel’s global “footsteps”.
Václav Havel – a Czech myth, or Havel in a Nutshell
This interactive workshop lasting for about 180 minutes takes place in the “Havel in a Nutshell” exhibition hall. Primary and secondary school students are divided into groups within which they deal with various “research” projects. Students work with selected texts and are provided with particular books. The workshop is related not only to the teaching of Czech history, but also to personal, literary, artistic and media training, and increasing student’s democratic consciousness as citizens.
Workshop: The Audience
An interactive 90 minutes’ workshop for secondary school’s students deals with Havel´s well known play The Audience.
Workshop: Europe as a Task
An interactive 90 minutes’ workshop for secondary school’s students encourages young people to think about their Czech nationality and at the same time their relationship to Europe and the European spiritual legacy.
Workshop: The Life Story of Vaclav Havel
An interactive 90 minutes’ workshop for primary school pupils (6 – 12 years) brings the ideas and work of Václav Havel on human rights and civil society to children through Havel´s book for children Pizh'duks.
Exhibitions
Havel in a nutshell
The Václav Havel Library’s permanent exhibition brings Václav Havel’s story to life via a collage of photographs and quotations. Touchscreens place individual chapters of his life in the broader cultural and historical context, while a large-scale interactive map allows visitors to gain a tangible sense of Václav Havel’s global “footsteps”.
Oldřich Škácha – Occupation 1968
A collection of photographs by Oldřich Škácha from the Václav Havel Library’s collection.
The Faces of Resistance
Pavel Hroch’s online photographic exhibition captures the stories of those who, across several decades of Czechoslovak history, stood up to evil, inhumanity, oppression and coarseness and who at certain moments displayed courage, will to freedom, love of those around them and common sense.
Via the East to the West
In autumn 1989, Prague was flooded with citizens from the German Democratic Republic. For them, the Czechoslovak capital was to be a transfer station on the journey to freedom, to the western part of their country, whose division was symbolised by the Berlin Wall. One of the main reasons for the sudden growth in the number of refugees was the fear that the GDR would close its borders with Czechoslovakia, the only country East German citizens could enter without a visa, ahead of 40th anniversary celebrations of its foundation.
With a Passion for Freedom
Pavel Hroch’s photographs capture the revolutionary period springing from November 1989 as well as the era of transformation, the start of the 1990s, when things happened in Czechoslovakia that had previously been impossible and unimaginable, a period of joy and carnivalesque festivity, a period of visions, hopes and a great and perhaps somewhat naïve belief in the future. Twenty-five years later, the photographs hold a mirror up to the manner in which those dreams and visions have been realised and to where we find ourselves today.
August invasion of Hrádeček
A meeting of the children of dissidents and others who shared recollections of Václav Havel. The exhibition is a colourful collage of photographs, audio recordings – from talks by individual participants on the subject “My life with Václav Havel”, to a concert by Monika Načeva and Michal Pavlíček – and unique archival materials.
Depository
Archive / Documentation centre / Research projects
The Václav Havel Library is gradually gathering, digitizing, and making accessible written materials, photographs, sound recordings and other materials linked to the person of Václav Havel.
- 51218 records in total
- 15301 of events in the VH's life
- 2994 of VH's texts
- 2035 of photos
- 277of videos
- 557of audios
- 5726of letters
- 14722of texts about VH
- 6183 of books
- 0of bibliography records
Access to the database of the VHL’s archives is free and possible after registering as a user. Accessing archival materials that exist in an unreadable form is only possible at the reading room of the Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, 110 00 Prague 1, every Tuesday (except state holidays) from 9:00 to 17:00, or by prior appointment.
We will be glad to answer your queries at archiv@vaclavhavel-library.org.
Vladimir Hanzel's revolution
Collage of recollections, images and sound recordings from Vladimír Hanzel, President Václav Havel’s personal secretary, bringing the feverish atmosphere of the Velvet Revolution to life.
Václav Havel Interviews
A database of all accessible interviews given to print media outlets by the dramatist, writer and political activist Václav Havel between the 1960s and 1989. The resulting collection documents the extraordinary life story of an individual, as well as capturing a specific picture of modern Czechoslovak history at a time when being a free-thinker was more likely to lead to jail than an official public post.
Pavel Juráček Archive
The Pavel Juráček Archive arose in February 2014 when his son Marek Juráček handed over six banana boxes and a typewriter case from his father’s estate to the Václav Havel Library. Thousands of pages of manuscripts, typescripts, photographs, documents and personal and official correspondence are gradually being classified and digitalised. The result of this work should be not only to map the life and work of one of the key figures of the New Wave of Czechoslovak film in the 1960s, but also to make his literary works accessible in the book series The Works of Pavel Juráček.
The aim of the Václav Havel Library is to ensure that Pavel Juráček finds a place in the broader cultural consciousness and to notionally build on the deep friendship he shared with Václav Havel. Soon after Juráček’s death in 1989 Havel said of him: “Pavel was a friend of mine whom I liked very much. He was one of the most sensitive and gentle people I have known – that’s why I cannot write more about him.”
All about Library
Staňte se členy Klubu přátel Knihovny Václava Havla
„Domnívám se, že se nám daří naplňovat vizi Václava Havla, jenž při založení Knihovny prohlásil, že má smysl jedině jako živoucí organismus, který zaujímá své nepřehlédnutelné místo v celku veřejného a politického života. Vnímáme to jako závazek a inspiraci do budoucna. Rádi bychom využili záznamů ze stovek našich akcí ve vlastním kanálu internetové televize, rozšířili publikační program, připravili další e-learningové série, začali pořádat workshopy pro učitele… To vše si však vyžádá nemalé finanční prostředky. Proto jsme se rozhodli obrátit na naše návštěvníky a příznivce s prosbou o podporu.“ – Michael Žantovský
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