Schwarzenberg had a successful TOP 09, but today… It fell in CT

“She was an extraordinary personality. He was a person of European, world importance and outlook. He was the informal foreign minister when he was not a minister. After that, he was foreign minister twice in a row, and he entered a field he was completely familiar with. He was a representative of a noble family, a very important family,” Kubičko recalled of Karel Schwarzenberg, who in the past was also the head of the Office of the President of the Republic in the era of Václav Havel.

“The names of Václav Havel and Karl Schwarzenberg opened the offices of European politicians. He was a very important person and a person who was a representative of the patriotic Czech nobility. Although he only spent his childhood in Czechoslovakia, he did not forget it. He really came home,” Kubičko mentioned.

He himself then remembers the word forester when he remembers Karel Schwarzenberg. This is what Schwarzenberg had written on his business card. “He was a person connected to the land and to the possessions his family had. So I remember what I saw on his business card that he was handing out,” said Kubičko.

According to him, Schwarzenberg also had a specific sense of humor that attracted young people as well. “He was popular, paradoxically, even among young people. Although he was already of a certain age at the time when he founded TOP 09 with Miroslav Kalousko, he was still very popular among young people who, for example, voted for TOP 09 just because of him, not because of the other politicians who many times they did not even know, but only because of him. I would really like to remind you that he hasn’t just lost touch, even in exile, especially with Czech reality,” Kubičko added.

Photogallery: – Rabas, princes and Tibet

According to Kubiček, the creation of TOP 09 was a surprise to many years ago. “They even say that it was a bit of a shock, because Karel Schwarzenberg was then in the government from the Green Party, which was a bit paradoxical, because of course TOP 09 – The Green Party were completely different parties, it was really strange. Karel Schwarzenberg actually found himself in the government as foreign minister only thanks to the chairman at the time, who was betting on a certain ethos, Martin Bursík. Václav Klaus, then president, had great reservations about it, but in the end it all happened. And Karel Schwarzenberg understood Miroslav Kalouska’s great potential at that time,” Kubičko described how the friendship between Miroslav Kalouska and Schwarzenberg and TOP 09 came about.

“That party still exists today, even if it is not as successful as it was thanks to its founding father, Karl Schwarzenberg,” Kubičko concluded.

TOP 09
To the election with a smile

Senator Pavel Fischer met Karl Schwarzenberg in 1989. “But as a person who was by Václav Havel’s side, I really perceived him as a statesman. We saw his statesmanlike or patriotic attitude – he was really a great European, when he came behind the Iron Curtain to help political prisoners and dissidents, when he worked in the Helsinki Committee, or did a whole range of other personal initiatives. Then, as chancellor, he stood faithfully by Václav Havel’s side, helping generously, and he did this even long ago when he no longer held any position. And he did this in such a way that whenever we called him from Prague Castle that we needed help with something, he immediately came and was available to the president of the republic,” noted Fischer. As foreign minister, according to Fischer, Schwarzenberg enjoyed deep authority. “He had deep insight and he was really respected even in countries that would otherwise show only a formal interest in the Czech Republic,” he added.

According to Fischer, Karel Schwarzenberg was both a patriot and a European. “Wherever he stepped, he was taken as a partner everywhere. He knew history in detail and had a feeling. Even for events, historical events that could just happen around him. And in that sense he was a great inspiration,” said Fischer.