William H. Luers, Diplomat Who Backed Czech Dissident Leader, Dies at 95

[ad_1] In 1983, William H. Luers, a brand new American ambassador to Czechoslovakia, guess on an extended shot for its future: Vaclav Havel, the often-imprisoned poet-playwright and enemy of the Communist state. However after main a peaceable revolution to oust the regime, the lengthy shot cultural chief turned the democratically-elected final president of Czechoslovakia and the primary president of its successor, the Czech Republic.

The ambassador’s contribution to Mr. Havel’s very survival within the final years of Communist rule, and his subsequent political successes had been, in his personal telling, outcomes of maneuvers as light because the so-called Velvet Revolution that extricated Czechoslovakia from the Communists in 1989.

To spare Mr. Havel from an murderer’s bullet, a poison tablet or a return to jail — the place he may need been snuffed out quietly — Mr. Luers enlisted dozens of American cultural celebrities, largely buddies of his, to go to Prague, meet the playwright after which, at information conferences outdoors the attain of the government-controlled Czech information media, recast him in a protecting armor of worldwide publicity.

“I spent a variety of my profession with artists and writers, selling the humanities,” Mr. Luers mentioned in a 2022 interview for this obituary. “I used to be anxious that the Communists may poison him or put him again in jail. My technique was to shine as a lot gentle on Havel as doable. So I introduced in John Updike, Edward Albee and plenty of different individuals to speak about how nice an artist and cultural chief he was.”

The recruited celebrities, Mr. Luers mentioned, included the novelists E.L. Doctorow, Kurt Vonnegut and William Styron; Philippe de Montebello, the director of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Artwork; Joseph Papp, the producer-director who created Shakespeare within the Park; the California summary painter Richard Diebenkorn; and Katharine Graham, the writer of The Washington Submit.

The key police filmed and photographed the guests, however they had been hardly individuals who might be intimidated. Certainly, Mr. Luers mentioned, it was finally the Communist authorities who had been cowed by the worldwide consideration accorded to Mr. Havel. The underlying message, he mentioned, was that harming Mr. Havel may threat incalculable worldwide penalties for the Czech authorities.

Mr. Luers, who retired from the Overseas Service in 1986 and have become president of the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork in New York for 13 years, died on Saturday at his residence in Washington Depot, in western Connecticut. He was 95. His spouse, Wendy Luers, mentioned the trigger was prostate most cancers.

In a 29-year Overseas Service profession, Mr. Luers was a mix of diplomat and showman who cultivated friendships with artists and writers whereas looking for options to Chilly Battle issues for 5 presidential administrations, from Dwight D. Eisenhower’s within the Nineteen Fifties to Ronald Reagan’s within the ’80s. It was an period of nuclear perils, regional conflicts and fast-moving financial and political adjustments.

Specializing in Soviet and East European affairs, and fluent in Russian, Spanish and Italian, Mr. Luers labored at embassies in Moscow, Rome and different capitals of Europe and Latin America. At his profession’s finish, he was ambassador to Venezuela (1978-82) in addition to Czechoslovakia (1983-86).

On his final and most essential diplomatic project, Mr. Luers arrived in Prague months after Mr. Havel, the scion of a rich Czech household famous for its cultural accomplishments, was launched from 4 years in jail, the longest of his a number of sentences for political actions in defiance of the federal government.

Mr. Havel’s absurdist performs ridiculing Moscow’s satellite tv for pc state had already raised him to worldwide prominence, however had left him an official pariah and his works blacklisted at residence for years after Soviet tanks crushed the transient Prague Spring uprisings of 1968.

Mr. Luers set his management sights on Mr. Havel for his inventive skills and magnetic character, and contacted him via dissident intellectuals within the Civic Discussion board, a notable opponent of the Communist Social gathering. His American celeb buddies burnished Mr. Havel’s title as a author, however not as a statesman, which could have elevated Mr. Havel’s perils. Inside Czechoslovakia, solely the underground samizdat press circulated the encomiums to him.

Lengthy after Mr. Luers left Prague and retired in 1986, the protecting results of his stratagem lingered, and Mr. Havel performed a serious function within the peaceable revolution that toppled the Czech puppet authorities in 1989.

Weeks after that revolution, Mr. Havel was named president of Czechoslovakia by a unanimous vote of the Federal Meeting. In 1990, his presidency was affirmed by a landslide within the nation’s first free elections since 1946. And when the Czech Republic and Slovakia had been created as successor states in 1993, Mr. Havel turned the republic’s first president. Re-elected in 1998, he left workplace on the finish of his second time period in 2003.

“Invoice Luers had a exceptional profession — the truth is many careers,” James L. Greenfield, a former State Division colleague who later was an assistant managing editor of The New York Occasions, mentioned in a 2022 e mail for this obituary. (Mr. Greenfield died in 2024.) “He was the ambassador to Venezuela, however extra importantly to Czechoslovakia. Whereas there he turned the primary supporter, defender and protector of Vaclav Havel.”

William Henry Luers was born on Could 15, 1929, in Springfield, Ailing., the youngest of three kids of Carl and Ann (Lynd) Luers. William and his sisters, Gloria and Mary, grew up in Springfield. Their father was president of a neighborhood financial institution and their mom was an avid bridge participant. William attended Springfield Excessive College, the place he performed basketball and golf and was the senior class president; he graduated in 1947.

At Hamilton Faculty in upstate New York, he majored in chemistry and math and earned a bachelor’s diploma in 1951. He studied philosophy at Northwestern College briefly, however joined the Navy in 1952, based on an oral historical past. He graduated from officers’ candidate faculty, turned a deck officer on plane carriers within the Atlantic and Pacific and was discharged as a lieutenant in 1957. He then joined the Overseas Service, and in 1958 earned a grasp’s diploma in Russian research at Columbia College.

In 1957, he married Jane Fuller, an artist. They'd 4 kids: Mark, David, William and Amy, and had been divorced in 1979. That yr he married Wendy (Woods) Turnbull, the founder and president of the Basis for a Civil Society, who had two daughters, Ramsay and Connor Turnbull, from a earlier marriage.

His son Mark died of esophageal most cancers in 2020. Along with his spouse, he's survived by his different kids together with 5 grandchildren and 5 step-grandchildren.

After 16 years within the Overseas Service at decrease ranks, Mr. Luers turned an aide to Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger in 1973 (and personally delivered to him President Richard M. Nixon’s 1974 letter of resignation within the Watergate scandal.) He turned deputy assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs in 1975, and for European affairs in 1977.

Retiring from the Overseas Service, he joined the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork as president in a leadership-sharing association with Mr. de Montebello, who as director presided over inventive issues and was the Met’s spokesman. Mr. Luers, as chief government, dealt with funds, fund-raising and outreach to authorities businesses. The twin management, at occasions tense, lasted till 1999.

His sturdy swimsuit was fund-raising. “He’s indefatigable,” Carl Spielvogel, a trustee, mentioned of Mr. Luers. “I don’t know many individuals keen to be out at breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days per week, however he was. And he’s excellent at it.”

Mr. Luers doubled the museum’s endowment, modernized its monetary techniques, enlarged its workers to 1,800 full-time staff, secured the $1 billion Walter Annenberg assortment of French Impressionist and Submit-Impressionist work for the museum, and oversaw the development of latest galleries, wings, exhibitions and public packages. When he stepped down, the museum had a $116 million funds, and crowds that usually exceeded 50,000 guests on weekends.

In 1990, Mr. Luers organized for Mr. Havel, who was conferring with President George W. Bush on a state go to to the White Home, to make a aspect journey to New York to go to the museum. It was a touching reunion for Mr. Luers, who returned many occasions to the Czech Republic for conferences with previous buddies and Mr. Havel, who died in 2011.

After the Met, Mr. Luers was chairman and president of the United Nations Affiliation of the usA., which gives analysis and different providers for the U.N. For a few years, he additionally directed the Iran Undertaking, a nongovernmental group that supported United States negotiations with Iran.

Mr. Luers, who had properties in Manhattan and Washington Depot, wrote scores of articles for overseas coverage journals and newspapers, together with The Occasions. He lectured extensively and taught at Princeton, George Washington, Columbia and Seton Corridor Universities, and on the College of Superior Worldwide Research at Johns Hopkins College. Final fall, he launched a memoir, “Unusual Firm: Dissidents and Diplomats, Enemies and Artists.”

“My biggest satisfaction was the success of Vaclav Havel,” he mentioned within the 2022 interview. “Havel proved my level that tradition makes a distinction, particularly in worldwide relations. The Communist system was deeply flawed. It underestimated cultural leaders’ affect on the individuals.”