The older ones among us will remember him from an Austrian television series from the 1970s, in which the actor Fritz Muliar embodied this satirically exaggerated Prague character. Obviously, the Czechs seem to have been born with a sense of humour – as Sales Director Wolfgang Haschke, Business Unit Manager Burkhard Reploh and our then Sales Representative for Eastern Europe, Heinz Bruns, discovered during a visit to Cemix in Lodemic, Czech Republic, at the beginning of 2004.
During a tour of the company, they were surprised to discover that the HAVER company logo on one of our control cabinets had been changed to HAVEL. Such “renaming” not only testified to the obvious wit of the Cemex employees, but also to their deep admiration for the Czech writer and politician Václav Havel (*1936 †2011), who made a legendary rise from regime critic to president and never lost touch with the common people. Havel also played a key role in promoting German-Czech reconciliation.
One thing’s certain: Even if the Chinese speak of “Havel” and the Czechs write HAVEL – we remain unmistakably HAVER!