Velvet anniversary

In almost all Eastern European countries, 2014 is the twenty-fifth year. On 9 November the Berlin wall fell, and on 17 November there began in Prague’s Wenceslas Square the mass protest, which grew into a general strike, and by the end of the month overthrew the Czechoslovak Communist leadership.


Commemorations have taken place during the whole week in Prague. First of all, on Wenceslas Square, where on Monday, 17 November thousands gathered (and also protested against President Miloš Zeman), and candles have been continuously lit at the statue of St Wenceslas’ and at the Jan Palach memorial.

In the weekly Respekt, a selection was published of pictures from twenty-five years ago by Karel Cudlín, former personal photographer of President Václav Havel.

The close interconnection of the events in 1989 is illustrated by the exhibition in the Vítkov Hill monument, about how the East Germans who had fled to Prague were allowed out to the west in September 1989, which, together with the opening of the borders of Hungary, contributed to the fall of the Berlin wall, which then aided the success of the Prague protests.

The bookstores have been inundated with biographies and photo albums of Václav Havel. In the Lucerna, the representative cultural passage and movie palace next to Wenceslas Square, a week-long “Film Festival of Freedom” has been organized, which solemnly ended with the premier of the first movie on President Havel’s life: Život podle Václava Havla, “Life according to Václav Havel”. The film, realized in collaboration with Czech Television and the French-German channel Arte, was composed by Andrea Sedláčková from two hundred hours of documentary films and several family photos. It follows Havel’s life from his childhood – and even from his grandparents’ life –, carefully balanced and face-lifted, cleaned from every disturbing element, and smoothed. The film, which, according to its rather negative, but fair review, was made “for schools, for the anniversary and for the foreign public”, produces a canonized biography of the great president for posterity. It is no coincidence, that the presentation took place in Lucerna, built by the president’s grandfather, Vácslav Havel – a leading construction contractor of Prague in the the early 20th century –, and owned by the president’s second wife, Dagmar Havlová (whose merits are duly emphasized in the film). From now on, this will be the past.