Jan Křen

Jan Křen
Jan Křen in 2014
Born	(1930-08-22)22 August 1930 Prague, Czechoslovakia
Died	7 April 2020(2020-04-07) (aged 89) Prague, Czech Republic
Occupation	Historian

Jan Křen (22 August 1930 – 7 April 2020) was a Czech historian, academic, dissident during Czechoslovakia's communist era, and a Charter 77 signatory. He specialized in the study of Czech-German relations.^[1][2][3]

Biography

During the 1960s, Jan Křen became one of the first Czechoslovak historians to document and research the

He became involved with the pro-democracy dissident movement. He was one of the founding signatories of Charter 77 and began holding a series of underground seminars held covertly in apartments and universities.^[1][2]

Křen was also a co-founder of the Samizdat historical studies journal.^[2] In the 1980s, he published one of his best known books, "Conflicting Communities. Czechs and Germans 1780–1918", through his own Sixty-Eight Publishers, an illegal, underground publisher. The book was later published in Germany.^[2]

In 1989, Křen founded the Institute of International Studies at Charles University and served as its first director.^{[2] [4]} He also co-founded and chaired the Czech-German Commission of Historians and was involved with the Czech-German Fund of the Future.^[2] Křen was a visiting professor at German universities in Berlin, Bremen and Marburg.^[2]

The

Křen is believed to have contracted COVID-19 at the nursing home where he lived in the Michle district of Prague in March 2020.^[1] He died from the illness on 7 April 2020, at the age of 89 during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Czech Republic.^[1][2][3]

Awards

• Goethe Medal (1996)
• Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2000)^[2]
• Medal of Merit of the Czech Republic (2002)^[1]
• Magnesia Litera Award for educational literature book of the year (2006)^[2]

References