Former Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, one of the main figures of the country’s transition from a communist regime to democracy, has died at the age of 85, Reuters writes.

He was admitted to a hospital in Vienna last week, Czech media reported. News website Echo24, which reported the death on Sunday, said the family had been on their own.

“Karel Schwarzenberg is dead. He was one of the most important and kindest people in my life. May he rest in peace, the Czech Republic must be eternally grateful to him for all that he selflessly did for it,” confirmed X Miroslav Kalousek, founder of the TOP09 party, which Schwarzenberg led in the early days.

Who was Karel Schwarzenberg

Karel Schwarzenberg was born into a Czech noble family and became one of his friend Vaclav Havel’s top advisers after the former dissident won the country’s first free elections in 1990. He later served twice as Minister of Foreign Affairs between 2007 and 2013. He was a strong supporter of deeper European integration, and although he was an avowed conservative, his appeal extended to liberal-minded groups and young people in politics.

Schwarzenberg spent most of his life in exile, as his family was one of the main targets of the Communists, who seized power in a coup d’état in 1948, confiscating the extensive Schwarzenberg family estate, which included castles, forests and farmland, mainly in the south of the country , near the border with Austria.

While in exile in Austria, where he eventually took over the family estate, he supported the anti-communist human rights movement and sponsored a library of banned Czech literature.

After the “Velvet Revolution” of 1989, which peacefully overthrew the then-communist regime in Czechoslovakia, Schwarzenberg became Havel’s chief of staff.

Schwarzenberg took a more active role in politics as a senator in 2004 and helped found the TOP09 party, which is the minority partner in the center-right government coalition currently in power.

“Dear Kari, we thank you for everything you have done for our country,” the party on X said.

Schwarzenberg ran for president in 2013 but lost to Milos Zeman, another prominent but highly controversial figure in post-1989 Czech politics, who completed his second presidential term earlier this year. (Source: News.ro)