Quick Facts
Biography
Jiří Dienstbier (20 April 1937, in Kladno – 8 January 2011, in Prague) was a Czech politician and journalist. He was one of Czechoslovakia's most respected foreign correspondents before being fired after the Prague Spring. Unable to have a livelihood as a journalist, he worked as a janitor for the next two decades. During this time, he secretly started Lidove noviny.
After the end of communist rule in 1989, he became the country's first non-Communist foreign minister in four decades, a post he held until 1992. In 2008 he was elected to the Czech Senate for the Kladno region.
In 2000, the Vienna-based International Press Institute named him one of its 50 World Press Freedom Heroes of the past 50 years.
Awards and Honors
In 2013, Dienstbier was posthumously awarded the Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award by the Prague Society for International Cooperation.