In 1983, William H. Luers, a new American ambassador to Czechoslovakia, opted for a long time for his future: Vaclav Havel, the game-game poet often impressed and enemy of the communist state. But after leading a peaceful revolution to expel the regime, Long Shot’s cultural leader became democratically elected Czechoslovakia president and the first president of the successor, the Czech Republic.
The contribution of the ambassador to the same survival of Mr. Havel in recent years of communist domain, and his subsequent political successes were, in his own position, results of maneuvers as gentle as the so -called velvet revolution that expelled the Czechoslovakia of the communists in 1989.
To avoid Mr. Havel of an Assassin’s bullet, a poison pill or a return to prison, where he could have been silent in silence: Mr. Luers enlisted dishes of US cultural celebrities, mostly his friends, to visit Prague, meet the dramaturg Government, reset it in a protection or global.
“I spent much of my career with artists and writers, I promoted the doctor,” Luers said in a 2022 interview for this obitarian. “I was concerned that the communists could poison him or put it again in prison. My strategy was to shine as much light as possible on Havel. So I brought John Updike, Edward Albee and a cultural woman to speak.” “”
The recruited celebrities, said Luers, included the novelists the Doctorow, Kurt Vonnegut and William Styron; Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York; Joseph Papp, the producer director who created Shakespeare in the park; The abstract painter of California Richard Diebenkorn; and Katharine Graham, the editor of the Washington Post.
The secret police filmed and photographed visitors, but they were barely people who could be intimidated. In fact, said Mr. Luers, the communist authorities were ultimately intimidated by global attention granted to Mr. Havel. The underlying message, he said, was that damaging Mr. Havel could risk the incalculable international consequences for the Czech government.
Mr. Luers, who retired from the foreign service in 1986 and became president of the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York for 13 years, died on Saturday at his home in Washington Depot, in western Connecticut. He was 95 years old. His wife, Wendy Luers, said the cause was prostate cancer.
In a 29 -year foreign service career, Mr. Luers was a mixture of diplomat and showman who cultivated friends with artists and writers while looking fast
Specialized in Soviet affairs and Eastern Europe, and Russian fluid, Spanish and Italian, Mr. Luers worked in embassies in Moscow, Rome and other capitals of Europe and Latin America. At the end of his career, he was ambassador to Venezuela (1978-82), as well as Czechoslovakia (1983-86).
In his last and most important diplomatic allocation, Mr. Luers Artins in Prague months after Mr. Havel, the stem of a Czech family Rica pointed out for his cultural achievements, was released from four years in prison, the longest of his various sentences for political activities in the Government’s challenge.
The absurdist of Mr. Havel who ridiculous the Moscow satellite state had already elevated it to international prominence, but left an official outcome and his works on the blacklist at home for years after the Soviet tanks crushed the overtensions of the letter of the letter or 1968.
Mr. Luers established his leadership in Mr. Havel for his artistic friends of his famous Americans who opened the name of Mr. Havel as a writer, but not as a statesman, which could have increased the dangers of Mr. Havel. Within Czechoslovakia, only the Samizdat underground press distributed the commendations.
Long after Mr. Luers left Prague and retired in 1986, the protective effects of his ploy were delayed, and Havel played an important role in the peaceful revolution that knocked Czech puppet government in 1989.
Week after that revolution, Havel was appointed president of Czechoslovakia for a unanimous vote of the Federal Assembly. In 1990, its presidency was affirmed by a landslide in the first free elections of nations since 1946. And when the Czech Republic and Slovakia were created as successive states in 1993, Mr. Havel became the first president of the Republic. Re -elected in 1998, left office at the end of his second term in 2003.
“Bill Luers had a remarkable career, in fact, many races,” said James L. Greenfield, former colleague of the State Department that later, assistant managing editor of The New York Times, in an email of 2022 for this obitarian. (Mr. Greenfield died in 2024.) “He was the ambassador to Venezuela, but the most important thing for Czechoslovakia. While there he became the main defender, defender and protector of Vaclav Havel.”
William Henry Luers was born on May 15, 1929 in Springfield, Illinois, the youth or three children of Carl and Ann (Lynd) Luers. William and his sisters, Gloria and Mary, grew up in Springfield. His father was president of a local bank and his mother was an avid bridge player. William attended Springfield High School, where he played basketball and golf and was the president of the senior class; He graduated in 1947.
In the Hamilton College in the north of the state of New York, he specialized in chemistry and mathematics and obtained a degree in 1951. Hello, he studied philosophy at Northwestern University Letterly, but joined the Navy in 1952, according to an oral history. He graduated from the School of Officer candidates, became a deck officer in the aircraft carriers in the Atlantic and the Pacific and was discouraged as a lieutenant in 1957. Hello, then he joined the foreign service, and in 1958 he obtained a mastery university.
In 1957, he married Jane Fuller, an artist. They had four children: Mark, David, William and Amy, and divorced in 1979. That year he married Wendy (Woods) Turnbull, the founder and president of the Foundation for a civil society, who had two daughter and Connor Turnbull, Of a previous marriage.
His son Mark died of esophagus cancer in 2020. In addition to his wife, his other children survive along with five grandchildren and five grandchildren.
After 16 years in the Foreign Service in lower ranges, Luers became assistant to Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger in 1973 (and personally delivered the renunciation letter of President Richard M. Nixon in the Watergate scandal).
When retiring from the foreign service, he joined the Metropolitan Museum of Art as president in a leadership exchange package with Mr. Montebello, who as director presided over artistic issues and was the MET spokesman. Mr. Luers, as executive director, managed finance, up and dissemination of funds to government agencies. Dual leadership, sometimes in time, lasted until 1999.
His strong suit was the collection of funds. “It’s indefatigable,” said Carl Spielvogel, an administrator, about Mr. Luers. “I don’t know many people willing to go for breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week, but it was. And it’s very good in that.”
Mr. Luers doubled the provision of the museum, modernized its financial systems, extended its staff to 1,800 full -time employees, said the Walter Annenberg collection of $ 1 billion of French impressionist and postimpressionist paintings for the museum, and supervised the construction of new galleries, wings, exhibitions and public programs. When he resigned, the museum had a budget of $ 116 million, and the crowds that often exceeded 50,000 visitors on weekends.
In 1990, Mr. Luers organized Mr. Havel, who was conferreding with President George W. Bush on a state visit to the White House, to make a trip to New York to visit the museum. It was a moving meeting for Mr. Luers, who returned many times to the Czech Republic for meetings with old friends and Mr. Havel, who died in 2011.
After With, Mr. Luers was president and president of the United Nations Association of the United States, which provides research and other UN services for many years, also directed the Iran project, a non -governmental organization that supported the negotiations of the United States with Iran.
Mr. Luers, who had houses in Manhattan and Washington Depot, wrote dozens of articles for foreign policy and rookies magazines, including Times. He gave lectures widely and taught at the Universities of Princeton, George Washington, Columbia and Seton Hall, and at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. The past fall launched a memory, “unusual company: dissidents and diplomats, enemies and artists.”
“My greatest satisfaction was the success of Vaclav Havel,” he said in the 2022 interview. “Havel demonstrated my point that culture makes a difference, especially in international relations. The communist system was deeply burning. He underestimated the influence of cultural leaders” on people. “
Alex Traub Contributed reports.