2023-11-12 08:47:23
It was on October 28th when the Czech Republic celebrated its most important national holiday – the anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia in 1918. However, for health reasons, he did not personally attend the ceremony at Prague Castle.
Instead, his son took over the order from President Petr Pavel. A few days later news came that Schwarzenberg had been flown to a hospital in Vienna. According to the daily newspaper “Blesk” this was due to heart and kidney problems. Schwarzenberg commented calmly and was happy that he would be able to see his children and grandchildren living in Austria. Everything was different on Sunday morning when his party colleague Miroslav Kalousek announced on X (formerly Twitter) that Schwarzenberg had died.
Most important figure in Czech politics
For years, the descendant of the famous noble family was one of the most important figures on the Czech political scene. He was also known in this country for his pointed statements. It was not until 2021 that he retired as the oldest member of Parliament in Prague.
- HONEY: Karel Schwarzenberg is dead
Schwarzenberg was born on December 10, 1937 in Prague. A symbolic date, as he himself repeatedly emphasized, this is Human Rights Day. “And so perhaps it’s symbolic that I’ve worked in this area for a long time,” he said. He spent his childhood in Prague, at Orlik Castle and in Cimelice in Bohemia. After the communists came to power in Czechoslovakia in 1948, he had to leave his homeland.
After escaping, he studied law in Vienna and forestry in Munich. Due to the premature death of his adoptive father Heinrich Schwarzenberg, he had to stop studying and manage the family property in Austria and Bavaria. Uncle Heinrich, head of the line, had no male successor. After the fall of communism in 1989, Schwarzenberg returned to what was then Czechoslovakia and worked for years as head of Václav Havel’s presidential office.
Convinced European
Schwarzenberg was a convinced European and always advocated for the Czech Republic to belong to the “hard core” of the EU. “I really consider any other path to be unfavorable and dangerous for the Czech Republic,” he warned at the time. He doesn’t believe in national character. “I know Austrians, Bavarians and Poles and I can say that together we are such a Central European mix,” Schwarzenberg once said.
In the Czech Republic, where he was often just called “Prince,” Schwarzenberg attracted attention with his noble demeanor, usually smoking a pipe and wearing a bow tie around his neck. A red and blue bow tie also became the logo of his TOP 09 party. His naps at conferences and meetings also caused smiles and malice. “The Foreign Minister doesn’t sleep. He just thinks,” his former spokeswoman once said in response to a photo of the slumbering Schwarzenberg that a company had used without his knowledge to advertise its energy drink.
On the other hand, Schwarzenberg might also be very direct, sometimes using colloquial expressions or even swear words. Austrian nuclear opponents also fell victim to this openness, whom he referred to with the Czech expression “magor,” which can be translated as “complete fool,” “idiot,” or “crazy.”
As foreign minister, he compared the work of diplomats to that of prostitutes. “We diplomats are in many ways like the easy girls: they also work in the evenings and on weekends and cannot choose their partners,” said Schwarzenberg in an interview for the Czech daily “Pravo” in 2008 in response to the question of whether he would shake hands with then Prime Minister Hashim Thaci on a possible visit to Kosovo, even though he was accused of involvement in crimes in the former Yugoslavia.
After the Russian attack on Ukraine, Schwarzenberg drew parallels between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Adolf Hitler. “The argument is the same as that used by ‘our leader’ once morest Austria: ‘This is not an independent nation, it is part of our nation, they have no right to make an independent policy,'” said Schwarzenberg in an APA interview .
More political highlights
The highlight of his political career was his presidential candidacy in 2013. The then 75-year-old Schwarzenberg surprisingly made it into the runoff election. His popularity was so great, especially in the liberal Czech capital Prague, that some people even saw him at Prague Castle. Ultimately, he lost to his competitor Miloš Zeman in the second round of voting by 45.2 percent to 54.8 percent.
Schwarzenberg also achieved a successful feat when he co-founded the liberal-conservative party TOP 09 in 2009. Under Schwarzenberg’s leadership, TOP 09 took over many voters from the conservative Democratic Citizens’ Party (ODS), which was then in crisis, and became the strongest center-right party in the country. Although Schwarzenberg was “only” honorary chairman of TOP 09 in recent years, the party has now lost popularity and is only represented in the House of Representatives thanks to the electoral alliance “Spolu” (“Together”) with the ODS and the People’s Party.
A constant critic of Austrian politics
Schwarzenberg always did not mince his words when it came to Austrian politics. In an interview on the occasion of his birthday with the “Kleine Zeitung” he criticized the veto threat once morest the Schengen admission of Romania and Bulgaria. “Austria is disregarding its historical task of taking care of these countries,” he said. Schwarzberg also criticized the ÖVP and the former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP). “We are paying the high price for Sebastian,” he said, who calls himself an “old black man.” “The entire party has fallen for him. A fraud. That’s what he was from the start. What he said and what he did was a complete contradiction. Just think of migration policy!”
Recently, Schwarzenberg has lived in seclusion, partly because of health problems. In addition to the hearing problems, he also had difficulty walking, so that he no longer enjoyed walks in the forest, as he told the “Kleine Zeitung”. “I’m amazed every day when I wake up (…) I’m happy when I see my grandchildren. Otherwise I have no expectations,” said Schwarzenberg.
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