Čestmír Císař

Čestmír Císař (1968)

Čestmír Císař (born January 2, 1920 in Hostomitz , † March 24, 2013 in Prague ) was a Czechoslovak politician.

Life

Císař first attended high school in Dux from 1931 to 1936 , studied in Dijon from 1936 to 1939 , worked after the war as an employee in the Prague insurance company and then graduated from the philosophical institute at Charles University in Prague .

In 1945 he joined the Communist Party , where he held the post of employee of the Central Committee until 1952 and saw his main task in consolidating the party's position. From 1952 to 1957, as secretary of the party in West Bohemia, he was involved in the brutal suppression of the strike against the currency reform in 1953.

In 1957 he was appointed to Prague as a representative of the editor-in-chief of the party newspaper Rudé právo . From 1961 to 1963 he was the editor-in-chief of the monthly magazine Nová Mysl . This was followed by the function of secretary of the Central Committee for six months before he was appointed Minister of Education in 1963. Since he represented liberal views, he was transferred to Bucharest in 1965 as ambassador .

During the Prague Spring , Císař was ordered back to the Czech Republic, appointed Secretary of the Communist Party's Central Committee for Education, Science and Culture in April 1968, and elected chairman of the Czech National Council in July 1968 . After the resignation of President Antonín Novotný , he applied unsuccessfully for the office of President. After the occupation of the country in August 1968, he resigned from his position.

In 1969 he was deposed and expelled from the party a year later. The following twelve years of his working life he worked in the state institute for cultural maintenance.

At the end of the 1980s he became active again and founded the Obroda Social Conversion Club . After the Velvet Revolution he wanted to take a position in the new government together with Vojtěch Mencl , but failed because of the objection from the citizens' forum .

After Gustáv Husák's resignation , he reapplied for the post of President, but then gave up in favor of Václav Havel . His resignation in 1991 was rewarded with the position of ambassador to the Council of Europe and special advisor to Foreign Minister Jiří Dienstbier . Under pressure from the population, he had to give up the post again.

Works

As a publicist, Císař published specialist articles on art.

memoirs

• Člověk a Politik, Kniha vzpomínek a úvah (1998)

literature

• Čestmír Císař , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 32/2013 from August 6, 2013, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

• Literature by and about Čestmír Císař in the catalog of the German National Library