To the editor:

The recent death of former Czech President Václav Havel reminds us of the unique character of the two presidents chosen by Czechoslovaks to lead their country at moments of deliverance into freedom.

Václav Havel was a leader in the movement to topple the oppressive communist rule that had been imposed by the Soviet Union after the Soviets throttled the “Prague Spring” of Alexander Dubcek and occupied Czechoslovakia.

When that movement finally succeeded, the Czechs chose Havel — not a typical politician but a playwright — to become president of a newly free Czechoslovakia in 1989.

Seventy- one years earlier, when Czechs and Slovaks were granted their freedom from Austro-Hungarian rule after World War I, the first president of an independent Czechoslovakia was Tomás Masaryk, a professor of philosophy and proponent of ethics.

He had been a leader in the independence movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and worked indefatigably during the war for Western support of that independence.

He died in 1937. I recall watching his somber funeral procession from a balcony in Prague.

Frank J. Heymann

Brunswick