Karel Schwarzenberg, former minister and collaborator of Vaclav Havel, died at the age of 85

Karel Schwarzenberg, former Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs and collaborator of former President Vaclav Havel, has died at the age of 85, his party TOP 09 announced on Sunday November 12. According to Czech media, he died the day before in a hospital in Vienna (Austria), after months of illness. This polyglot aristocrat (he spoke six languages), pipe smoker and whiskey lover, also ran for president in the first direct election in the Czech Republic in 2013, losing the second round to Milos Zeman. He served as an MP until his retirement in 2021.

Karel Schwarzenberg was born in Prague on December 10, 1937 into the princely Schwarzenberg family. She fled the country after the communists took power in 1948, which marked the beginning of an era of persecution of the nobility. After studying law and forestry at Austrian and German universities, without “never finish anything”according to him, he took charge of the family’s property, including the forests and the Schwarzenberg Palace in Vienna.

“An exceptional personality”, greets the Prime Minister

Still in exile in 1984, Karel Schwarzenberg became president of the International Helsinki Committee for Human Rights. He returned to Czechoslovakia after the fall of communism during the peaceful Velvet Revolution of 1989 and recovered a considerable part of the family fortune confiscated by the communists. He made his political debut as head of the presidential office under Vaclav Havel, elected president of Czechoslovakia in 1989 and of the Czech Republic in 1993.

A Czech and Swiss citizen, Karel Schwarzenberg became a senator in 2004, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, serving two mandates in right-wing governments in 2007-2013. Co-founder of the conservative party TOP 09 in 2009, he became an MP in 2013. “If I wasn’t stupid, I would have enjoyed a nice retirement, I would have gone to the forest to hunt deer, I would have traveled the world, I would have enjoyed good wine. But as I I’m stupid, I got into politics”he once said jokingly.

Karel Schwarzenberg was “an exceptional personality of Czech exile and Czech politics of recent decadesgreeted the Czech Prime Minister, Petr Fiala. I respected him for his help to Czech dissidents under the totalitarian regime and for deciding to serve our country selflessly after 1989.’