Olga Havlová
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Olga Havlová, née Šplíchalová (11 June 1933 Prague – 27 January 1996 Prague), was the first wife of Václav Havel, the last president of Czechoslovakia and first president of the Czech Republic.
Olga Šplíchalová was born in Žižkov, Prague. After completing primary school she worked in the factory of Tomáš Baťa. From 1961 to 1964 she worked as an usher in the Theatre on the Balustrade, where Václav Havel was also active (she had first met him in 1956). She married Václav Havel in 1964.
Olga Havlová was active among the Czech dissidents. In 1979 she co-founded the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Persecuted; beginning in that year she also led the samizdat Edice Expedice (Dispatch Series). In 1990 she founded the Olga Havlová Foundation. She died of cancer in 1996. For "outstanding contributions for democracy and human rights", she was posthumously awarded the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk in 1997.
