Press servis
Basic information
When using listed photographs here, please acknowledge the source:
Source: © The Vaclav Havel Library
Corporate identity & logo
The Václav Havel Library – mission
The Václav Havel Library was founded following the model of the presidential libraries in the USA and it is the only institution of this kind in Europe. Its aim is to document, research and promote the life, work and thoughts of Václav Havel, playwright, freedom fighter, organiser of Czech and middle European independent culture, prisoner of conscience, leader of the Velvet Revolution of 1989, Czechoslovak and Czech president, “Czech myth” and one of the world’s moral authorities of the 20th century.
For this purpose, the Library gradually gathers all available materials concerning Václav Havel in their digital form, including texts, memorials, photographs, artefacts, recordings or videos and books. The Library is a real library where you can find books by Havel in Czech, as well as in their various translations, books on Václav Havel, books related to the time context. The exhibition “Havel in a Nutshell” has been open to the public so that people may learn basic and essential information about Havel and also see some of the completely unknown pieces of Havel’s work.
The Library publishes books, organises exhibitions, holds debates, colloquiums, small conferences and others in order to map the life and times of Václav Havel, his family and people close to him. Secondary schools are offered educational programmes whereby students can learn more about Havel’s topics and also about the era before November 1989, the era of a lack of freedom.
Martin C. Putna – Director
Martin C. Putna (1968) is a literary historian, specializing in the relation between culture and religion. He graduated from philology and theology, and has been teaching at Charles University since 1992. He has been a docent of comparative literature since 1998. In the years 2004 – 2005, he was an associate professor at the University of Regensburg, Bavaria. In the years 2007 – 2008, he was on a Fulbright research programme at Boston College, the USA. He was one of the founders of the literary review Souvislosti and of the Czech Christian Academy. He has published several monographs (Česká katolická literatura v evropském kontextu 1848-1918; Órigenés z Alexandrie; Řecké nebe nad námi aneb antický košík and others), collections of essays (My poslední křesťané), editions (Karel VI. Schwarzenberg: Torzo díla), translations from Latin, German and Russian languages, and others.
Photos
