Staňte se členy Klubu přátel Knihovny VH
Club / News / Program
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.
VHL launches donations site 05/10/19
Today, on the 83rd anniversary of Václav Havel’s birth, we are launching the Václav Havel Library donations website, www.havelnavzdy.cz (the title means “Havel forever”). More
Program for January 2020<>
Krzysztof Miller: Breakthroughs and Conflicts
- Where: Leica Gallery, Školská 28, Praha 1
- When: November 8, 2019, 19:00 – January 5, 2020, 21:00
Work by the Polish photo reporter from the Velvet Revolution and around the world.
1989. The Eastern Bloc is falling apart. Krzysztof Miller, then a fledgling Polish reporter, captures in his pictures demonstrations and changes in Poland, the Velvet Revolution in Prague and the bloody fall of the regime in Romania.
Between 1990 and 2008 he documented a series of military conflicts and victims of massacres and famines. Miller, who is today famous, has undertaken almost 60 international trips, returning to a number of places several times. Among other spots, he has taken pictures in Romania, Iran, Georgia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Bosnia, Croatia, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Burundi, Zaire, Kosovo, Congo, Iraq, Uganda, Southern Sudan and Kenya.
Miller immortalised key moments and central conflicts of the 20th century, as this exhibition bears out. The images on show deliver not just a picture of the contemporary world but also of a perceptive and exceptional photo reporter who, thanks to his perceptive eye, has managed to capture ordinary people in their everyday reality.
The exhibition is an accompanying event to Festival of Freedom, celebrating the anniversary of 17 November 1989.
Co-organisers: Polish Institute in Prague, Václav Havel Library, Leica Gallery Prague, Dom Spotkań z Historią and Agencja Gazeta. The project has been supported by the Czech-Polish Forum of the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Amputations: Stories from an Undeclared War
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: January 6, 2020, 19:00 – 21:00
Igor Pomerantsev, a poet, radio dramatist and journalist with the BBC and Radio Free Europe, will introduce a pictorial book by five authors focused on the tragedy of the war in Eastern Ukraine. Amputation is a versatile metaphor for the excising of part of the body, of state territory and also of human consciousness. The heroes of Igor Pomerantsev’s poetry collection Amputace (Amputations) are 12 volunteer soldiers who set off to protect their country and returned from the war without limbs. How to live? To forget or to remember? To reconcile oneself or to fight? As the officer Andrej Skorochod says, losing a leg is forever but losing Crimea or Donbas is not.
The evening will also include a screening of excerpts from the documentary film Amputation (2017) by Igor Pomerantsev and Lýdie Starodubcevá. Other authors of the anthology, Boris Chersonskij and Ljudmila Chersonskaja, will also present their work. Boris Chersonskij’s 2014 collection Missa in tempore belli (Mass in a Time of War) was a response in poetry form to shock at the “amputation” of Crimea and the undeclared war in Donbas.
The Ukrainian poet Ljudmila Chersonskaja also focuses on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Czech readers have their first opportunity to become acquainted with her work with a selection from the 2018 collection Vaulting the Ditch. The translator and psychiatrist Džamila Stehlíková will also share her impressions from a trip to Eastern Ukraine in 2014.
Introduced by Michael Žantovský, director of the Václav Havel Library.
Interpretation into Czech provided.
A Reading for Josef Škvorecký
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: January 7, 2020, 18:30 – 22:00
You are cordially invited to a reading of the correspondence of the Škvoreckýs, the married exiles who founded ’68 Publishers, and more.
The evening will feature music, which was extremely important to both Škvorecký’s.
It will also include the exhibition The Swell Season, curated by Václav Krištof and loaned by the Prague 4 district authority.
Organised by the Václav Havel Library in cooperation with the Josef Škvorecký Society and the PEN Club.
Amnesty
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: January 9, 2020, 19:00 – 21:00
An amnesty may be criminal, premediated or based on a desire for fundamental change. The new Czechoslovak president Václav Havel declared an amnesty on 1 January 1990. Later referred to as the great amnesty, it became associated with a rise in crime. However, it was intended to help society come to terms with a regime regarded as unjust to all as well as to allow a transformation of the repressive penal system.
The amnesty and the extent to which it was used to change criminal justice will be discussed by philosopher and journalist Fedor Blaščák and lawyer Lenka Marečková, co-authors of the book Amnestie (Amnesty), published on the 30th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution in an attempt not to defend the amnesty but to lay out the facts and place them in context, and John Bok, who along with Lenka Marečková and other dissidents helped calm unrest and revolts in prisons at the turn of 1990.
Organised by the Václav Havel Library in cooperation with publishers Slovart.
First State Visit: Václav Havel in Munich
- Where: Literaturhaus, Salvatorplatz 1, Munich
- When: January 13, 2020, 20:00 – 22:00
On December 29, 1989 Václav Havel was elected Czechoslovak president, with the playwright president became an icon of the Velvet Revolution. Just four days later, on January 2, 1990 he carried out his first international trip to Germany, where he visited Munich. As a trip, it was an important signal. But how come it took place so soon? What were the intentions behind it? And how did Václav Havel do as a novice in world politics?
Guests who experienced those events personally will look back: Bernd Posselt (Member of the European Parliament and spokesperson of the Sudeten Germans), Milan Horáček (Member of the European Parliament) and Michael Žantovský (director of the Václav Havel Library and at that time spokesperson for Václav Havel).
Discussion chaired by Daniel Brössler, Brussels correspondent of Süddeutsche Zeitung.
The debate will be held in German without interpretation into Czech.
Organised by the Václav Havel Library in cooperation by the Stiftung Literaturhaus and Haus des Deutschen Ostens.
Debate with Respect
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: January 14, 2020, 19:00 – 21:00
Editors of the weekly Respekt and their guests will discuss a topical issue. For more details visit www.Václavhavel.cz
Bohdan Holomíček: I’m Not Sad
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: January 16, 2020, 19:00 – 21:00
Ceremonial launch of the Pocket VH Plays series.
The newly established Library book series Pocket VH Plays gives students and others the unique chance to carry Václav Havel’s plays with them even if they don’t have a bag or backpack over their shoulder. It is characterised by a pleasant format, a nice, easily legible font and above all unique content – what more could a reader wish for?
The first volume in the series is entitled Já nejsem smutný (I’m Not Sad) and contains Audience and Unveiling, the first two plays in which the legendary character Ferdinand Vaněk appeared.
The book and series as a whole will be launched by Bohdan Holomíček, who will share recollections alongside photographs from the very period when Václav Havel was writing the Vaněk plays.
Jan Lukavec: Imaginary Zoology
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: January 20, 2020, 19:00 – 21:00
Havel’s pig, Kafka’s chimpanzee… and other animals in the works of major writers. How did the perception of animals evolve under our predecessors? What place did dogs, ants or magpies occupy in their minds and what remains of those meanings today? And can literature help us a achieve a better relationship with our “furry friends” than the one that has prevailed in modern times?
The book Imaginární zoologie (Imaginary Zoology) offers a cultural history of selected animals, from ancient, mythical times to the present day. Generally speaking it chimes with Havel’s assertion that man is not the ruler of nature, merely a part of it. Among other things the publication shows that along with increasing environmental awareness there is also a growing realisation that every animal has its place in the ecosystem and in that sense is worthy of protection and the attention that an increasing range of living organisms are receiving, including from authors.
The book will be discussed by its author Jan Lukavec, anthropologist Lukáš Senft and literary scientist Pavel Kořínek.
Evening with an Illiterate
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: January 23, 2020, 19:00 – 21:00
Presentation of the Czech translation of the book Analfabet (The Illiterate), published by Větrné mlýny, by the writer and intellectual guru of contemporary Slovakia Michal Havran.
Jiří Peňás: Excursions for the Senior and Advanced
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: January 27, 2020, 19:00 – 21:00
A fun evening bordering on a variety show for the senior and advanced.
The book with the Hrabalesque title Výpravy pro starší a pokročilé (Excursions for the Senior and Advanced) brings together a collection of weekly travel essays that Jiří Peňás wrote for the magazine Týdeník Echo. In its way it is a unique portrait of a world near at hand and further afield, growing out of a journey that cannot be halted. The texts blend personal experience with history, history of art and politics and romance with humour (for the most part bitter and melancholic).
Participants will include close friends of Jiří Peňás, who will himself host.
For more details, a personal journey is recommended.
Přemysl Houda: The Normalisation Festival
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: January 28, 2020, 19:00 – 21:00
Normalizační festival (The Normalisation Festival) is an original monograph about Czechoslovak late socialism, in particular the late socialist public sphere, which is today regarded as toxic. The book’s author Přemysl Houda eschews the dichotomy of dead and living water and shows that it was indeed possible to do something meaningful with the grey words of socialism at that time.
Evening Marking the Anniversary of Jan Balabán’s Birth
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: January 29, 2020, 19:00 – 21:00
The first part of the evening will be given over to the play Bezruč?! by Jan Balabán and Ivan Motýl. In a slight modification of the play, we have focused on the relationship between Vašek/Bezruč and Marie/Maryčka. Taking part in the play, in the form of a staged reading, will be actors and non-actors, though all will delight together in the beauty and urgency of the text. (Featuring: Zuzana Truplová, Přemysl Bureš, Jakub Chrobák, Zdeněk Janošec Benda and co-author Ivan Motýl, director: Přemysl Bureš).
In the second part, participants and other guests will recall the life and oeuvre of Jan Balabán, one of the most important turn of the century writers.
Friends, relatives and admirers of the author will take part, including Ivan Motýl, Pavel Hruška, Zdeněk Janošec Benda, Přemysl Bureš and Jakub Chrobák.
Ivo Vodseďálek – Little-Known Genius
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: January 30, 2020, 19:00 – 21:00
The work of Ivo Vodseďálek (1931–2017) can without hype be described as one of the previously undiscovered treasures of modern Czech literature. The writer is virtually unknown to most readers but enjoys an almost cult status in the literary community. His friends and admirers included such greats of Czech literature as Bohumil Hrabal, Kamil Lhoták, Vladimír Boudník and Egon Bondy, while his legacy has been the focus of literary historians and critics for some time. Dílo 1949–1998 (Works, 1949–1998), a voluminous, 1,100-page volume of Vodseďálek’s selected poetry will be presented by its editor Martin Machovec, author Jáchym Topol, filmmaker Olina Kaufmanová (Vodseďálek’s daughter) and Argo publishing house editor Petr Onufer.
Actor Karel Dobrý will read from the author’s work.
Organised by the Václav Havel Library in cooperation with the Argo publishing house.
Global Challenges to Liberal Thought
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: January 31, 2020, 13:00 – February 1, 2020, 17:00
From West to East, the spread of populist and authoritarian regimes is challenging the liberal order and undermining its core values. What are the causes of this phenomenon? And how can they be addressed? To answer these questions Reset-Dialogues on Civilizations and Václav Havel Library are convening a two-day forum (four panels and two roundtables) with some of the world’s foremost political scientists and philosophers for a comparative examination of the diverse perspectives on liberalism in contemporary political cultures.
Confirmed speakers include Albena Azman, Giancarlo Bosetti, Craig Calhoun, José Casanova, Liu Chunrong, Anna Elisabetta Galeotti, Steven Hanson, Ivan Krastev, Sebastiano Maffettone, Avishai Margalit, Jiří Přibáň, Karel Schwarzenberg, Abdel Hussain Shaban, Ananya Vajpeyi, Diego Von Vacano, Michel Wieviorka and Michael Žantovský.
Event is organised in cooperation with Reset-Dialogues on Civilizations.
Admission is free on the basis of registration until capacity has been met.
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.
Mnichov 2020Brussels 2019Prague 2019Prague 2018Europe at the Crossroads (e-book)Prague 2017Prague 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.
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.
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.
- 50587 records in total
- 15290 of events in the VH's life
- 2994 of VH's texts
- 1784 of photos
- 275 of videos
- 555 of audios
- 5625 of letters
- 14718 of texts about VH
- 5451 of books
- 15274 of 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.”
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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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