COURAGE

łączymy kolekcje

Just few days after he was elected president, Václav Havel travelled to Ostrava on 3 January 1990. The so-called “Steel Heart of the Republic” therefore became the first city (besides Prague) visited by Havel as the president. Havel’s first steps led to Jaromír Šavrda’s grave at the Ostrava-Hrabová cemetery. There he paid tribute, by taking a bow and laying flowers, to the significant Ostrava writer, journalist, dissident and his own friend who died in May 1988 shortly before the Velvet Revolution. Havel’s symbolic gesture helped to spread awareness of Jaromír Šavrda; many Ostrava citizens first heard of him thanks to Václav Havel’s visit. The iconic pictures of the event are now part of the Jaromír and Dolores Šavrda Collection in the Ostrava City Archive.

Václav Havel’s correspondence is an important and valuable part of the Václav Havel Library collection as it reflects not only his thoughts and visions, but also the atmosphere of the times. The library’s collection includes digitized forms of his famous “Letters to Olga” (the original letters are stored in the Literary Archive of the Museum of Czech Literature), as well as an electronic version of Václav Havel’s correspondence with other important figures, including representatives of Czechoslovak exile before 1989. It contains correspondence with the historian Vilém Prečan, the physicist František Janouch (the original letters are stored in the František Janouch Archive) and the writer Josef Škvorecký (the letters are deposited at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, United States). Since 1989, Václav Havel’s correspondence has been published several times.

The manuscripts of Václav Havel’s plays and essays have great historical and cultural value. In addition, these texts remain relevant today, which is why his essays are still published and his plays still performed in many theatres in the Czech Republic and abroad. The Václav Havel Library collection includes a digitized version of the manuscript of Havel’s play “The Memorandum” (Vyrozumění) from June 1960 (the original manuscript is deposited in the National Archives of the Czech Republic). This black comedy based on the motif of an artificial, totalitarian language called “Ptydepe” was premiered in July 1965 at Divadlo na Zábradlí (Theatre on the Balustrade). The play was directed by Jan Grossman.

Csapody felt that it was not enough simply to research and document acts and fates of individuals who refused to perform compulsory military service. He sought to make the decisions and fates of these individuals familiar to wider audiences, as well. He began shooting the film with great enthusiasm but without any financial support or filmmaking experience. His technical supporter was cameraman László Pesty. Almost all of the raw material, including interviews and discussions, was preserved in the collection.