Victoria pays tribute to Václav Havel

Victoria University joins in mourning the passing of Václav Havel, Czech playwright and politican.

Václav Havel was President of Czechoslovakia from 1989 to 1992 after the Velvet Revolution against communist rule, and the first President of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003.

As a writer, he wrote over 20 plays as well as numerous non-fiction works, many on human rights.

He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Literature from Victoria University in 1995. The close of his citation read:

"Victoria University honours [his] rare and courageous perseverance, that commitment to what, in speaking of his illustrious Czech forebear, the Renaissance humanist Comenius, the President called “the paradise of the heart”, the immediate reality of the single human being, over whom no ideology, no theory, no system, may presume to take precedence."