Jiří Dienstbier

Who was Jiří Dienstbier?

Jiří Dienstbier was a Czech politician and journalist. He was one of Czechoslovakia's most respected foreign correspondents before being fired after the Prague Spring. Unable to have a livelihood as a journalist, he worked as a janitor for the next two decades. During this time, he secretly started Lidove noviny.

After the end of communist rule in 1989, he became the country's first non-Communist foreign minister in four decades, a post he held until 1992. In 2008 he was elected to the Czech senate for the Kladno region.

In 2000, the Vienna-based International Press Institute named him one of its 50 World Press Freedom Heroes of the past 50 years.