William H. Luers, diplomat who supported the Czech dissident leader, dies at 95

In 1983 William H. Luers, a new American ambassador for Czechoslovakia, bet on a long recording for his future: Vaclav Havel, the often imposed poet-playwright and enemy of the communist state. But after having led a peaceful revolution to expel the regime, the long shot cultural leader became the democratically chosen last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of her successor, the Czech Republic.

The contribution of the ambassador to the survival of Mr Havel in the last years of communist rule, and his subsequent political successes were, in his own tell, the results of maneuvers as gentle as the so -called velvet revolution that freed Czechoslovakia in 1989.

To save Mr Havel from the bullet of a murderer, a poison pill or a return to the prison-where he might have been quietly eradicated. Luers tientallen Amerikaanse culturele beroemdheden, meestal vrienden van hem, in dienst om Praag te bezoeken, om de toneelschrijver te ontmoeten en vervolgens, bij nieuwsconferenties buiten het bereik van de regering van de overheidsbereik buiten het bereik van de regering van de overheidsbereik buiten het bereik van de regering van de overheidsbereik buiten het bereik van de regering van de overheidsbereik buiten het bereik van de regering van de overheidsbereik van de overheidsbereik buiten het bereik van de regering van de Government reach Besides the reach of the government of the government’s range of the government reach of the government’s range outside the government’s government state, rewritten him in a protection media in a global publicity.

“I spent a lot of my career with artists and writers, promoting art,” Mr Luers said in an interview in 2022 for this death notice. “I was afraid that the communists would poison him or put him in prison. My strategy was to shine as much light as possible on Havel. So I brought in John Updike, Edward Albee and many other people to talk about how great an artist and cultural leader he was.”

The celebrated celebrities, Mr Luers said, include the novelist El DoctorowKurt Vonnegut and William Styron; Philippe de Montebello, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; Joseph Papp, the producer director who created Shakespeare in the park; The Californian abstract painter Richard Diebenkorn; And Katharine GrahamThe publisher of the Washington Post.

The secret police filmed and photographed the visitors, but they were hardly any people who could be intimidated. Indeed, Mr Luers said, it was ultimately the communist authorities that were grown by the global attention granted to Mr Havel. The underlying message, he said, was that the harm of Mr. Havel could risk unpredictable international consequences for the Czech government.

Mr Luers, who retired in 1986 from the foreign service and became president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for 13 years, died in his house in Washington Depot, in West -Connecticut on Saturday. He was 95. His wife, Wendy Luers, said the cause was prostate cancer.

In een 29-jarige carrière in de buitenlandse dienst was de heer Luers een mix van diplomaat en showman die vriendschappen cultiveerde met kunstenaars en schrijvers terwijl hij oplossingen zocht voor koude oorlogsproblemen voor vijf presidentiële administraties, van Dwight D. Eisenhower’s in de jaren 1950 tot Ronald Reagan’s in de jaren 80. Het was een tijdperk van nucleaire gevaren, regionale conflicten en snel bewegende economische en Political changes.

Specialized in Soviet and Eastern European Affairs, and fluent Russian, Spanish and Italian, Mr Luers worked at embassies in Moscow, Rome and other capitals of Europe and Latin -America. At the end of his career he was ambassador in Venezuela (1978-82) and Czechoslovakia (1983-86).

In his last and most important diplomatic task, Mr Luers arrived months after Mr Havel, the scion of a rich Czech family noticed for his cultural achievements, was released from four years in prison, the longest of his different punishments for political activities for political activities in violation of the government.

Mr Havel’s absurdist plays the satellite state of Moscow of Moscow to international fame, but had left him an official pariah and have put his works on the blacklist at home for years after Soviet tanks had crushed the short prague -upright of 1968.

Mr. Luers addressed his leadership sights on Mr Havel for his artistic talents and magnetic personality and contacted him through dissident intellectuals in the Civic Forum, a remarkable opponent of the Communist Party. His American famous friends have the name of Mr. Havel as a writer, but not as a statesman, who may have increased the dangers of Mr Havel. In Czechoslovakia, only the underground Samizdat press circulated the Encomiums to him.

Long after Mr. Luers left Prague and retired in 1986, the protective effects of his stratagem held and played Mr Havel an important role in the peaceful revolution that the Czech doll government had overthrown in 1989.

Weeks after that revolution, Mr Havel was appointed president of Czechoslovakia by a unanimous voice of the federal meeting. In 1990 his presidency was confirmed by a landslide in the first free elections of the country since 1946. And when the Czech Republic and Slovakia were founded as successor states in 1993, Mr Havel became the first president of the Republic. Re -elected in 1998, he left his office at the end of his second term in 2003.

“Bill Luers had a remarkable career – in fact many careers,” James L. GreenfieldA former colleague from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who was later an assistant editor -in -chief of the New York Times, said in an e -mail from 2022 for this death notice. (Mr. Greenfield died In 2024.) “He was the ambassador of Venezuela, but more importantly for Czechoslovakia. While he was there, he became the most important supporter, defender and protector of Vaclav Havel.”

William Henry Luers was born on May 15, 1929 in Springfield, Illinois, the youngest of three children of Carl and Ann (Lynd) Luers. William and his sisters, Gloria and Mary, grew up in Springfield. Their father was president of a local bank and their mother was an avid bridge player. William went to Springfield High School, where he played basketball and golf and was the senior class president; He graduated in 1947.

At Hamilton College in the state of New York he studied in chemistry and mathematics and obtained a bachelor’s degree in 1951. He briefly studied philosophy at Northwestern University, but joined the Navy in 1952, according to one oral history. He graduated from the candidate school of the officers, became a deck officer on aircraft carriers in the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific and was fired as a lieutenant in 1957. He then joined the foreign service and in 1958 obtained a master’s degree in Russian studies at Columbia University.

In 1957 he married Jane Fuller, an artist. They had four children: Mark, David, William and Amy, and were divorced in 1979. That year he married Wendy (Woods) Turnbull, the founder and president of the foundation for a civil society, who had two daughters, Ramsay and Connor Turnbull, From an earlier marriage.

His son Mark died of esophageal cancer in 2020. In addition to his wife, he is survived by his other children together with five grandchildren and five step -small children.

After 16 years in the foreign service at lower ranks, Mr Luers became an assistant for State Secretary Henry A. Kissinger In 1973 (and personally delivered to him, Richard M. Nixon’s 1974 dismissal letter in the Watergate scandal.) He became deputy assistant-state secretary for Inter-American Affairs in 1975 and for European Affairs in 1977.

With retirement from the foreign service, he joined the Metropolitan Museum of Art as president in a scheme for sharing leaders with Mr. de Montebello, who, as director of artistic matters and the spokesperson for WAS. Mr Luers, as Chief Executive, used finances, fundraising and outreach for government agencies. The double leadership, sometimes tense, lasted until 1999.

His strong suit was fundraising. “He is tireless,” Carl Spielvogela trustee, said of Mr. Luers. “I don’t know many people who want to be at breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week, but he was. And he’s very good at it.”

Mr Luers doubled the donation of the museum, modernized his financial systems, enhanced his staff to 1,800 full-time employees, assured the $ 1 billion Walter Annenberg collection of French impressionist and post-impressionist paintings for the museum and supervised the construction of new galleries, Wings, exhibitions and public. When he resigned, the museum had a budget of $ 116 million and crowds who often exceeded 50,000 visitors during the weekend.

In 1990, Mr Luers arranged Mr Havel, who survived President George W. Bush during a state visit to the White House, to make a trip to New York to visit the museum. It was a moving reunion for Mr. Luers, who returned many times to the Czech Republic for meetings with old friends and Mr. Havel, He died in 2011.

After Mr Luers was chairman and president of the United Nations Association of the US, who offers many years of research and other services for the UN, he 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 magazines and newspapers in foreign policy, including The Times. He gave big lessons 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. Last fall he released a memoir, “Uncommon Company: dissidents and diplomats, enemies and artists.”

“My greatest satisfaction was the success of Vaclav Havel,” he said in the 2022 interview. “Havel proved my point that culture makes a difference, especially in international relations. The communist system was deeply defective. It underestimated the influence of cultural leaders on people.”

Alex Traub contributed reporting.