ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the performance of this pioneer apology, the first apology that was issued in the Czech German reconciliation process. It argues that Vaclav Havel's apology had a strong effect because it was the first critical statement that was publicly made concerning Czechoslovakia's past at the end of Communist rule. The apology thereby broke the taboo of silence that had surrounded the expulsions of ethnic Germans after the war and introduced a new and provocative interpretation of Czechoslovakia's past to the national and international discourse. It markes the beginning of a difficult political debate between the Czech Republic and Germany. The chapter reviews Havel's pioneer apology had two distinctive effects. First, at the national Czechoslovakian level it ignited a heated societal debate about the political, judicial and moral interpretation of the country's past. Second, the apology performed at the bilateral level, bringing the difficult issue of material restitutions to the bilateral agenda.
