Bronislaw Geremek

Bronisław Geremek (2004)

Bronisław Geremek (originally Benjamin Lewertow ; born March 6, 1932 in Warsaw , † July 13, 2008 in Lubień near Nowy Tomyśl ) was a Polish historian and politician . From 1997 to 2000 he held the post of Polish Foreign Minister.

Life

Geremek came from a Jewish family, his grandfather was a rabbi . His father, who owned a skinning workshop, was murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp ; he and his mother were smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto in 1943 and survived with a Polish family. After graduating from high school in Wschowa , he studied history at the University of Warsaw , received his master's degree in 1955, received his doctorate in 1960 and completed his habilitation in 1972 at the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN). In 1989 Geremek became associate professor for medieval history, 1993 full professor ; he also received over 20 honorary doctorates.

Geremek's grave in Warsaw

From 1962 to 1965 he was a university lecturer at the Paris Sorbonne , 1992/93 visiting professor at the Collège de France and in 2002 he became a professor at the Europakolleg in Natolin in the south of Warsaw.

Bronisław Geremek died at the age of 76 on July 13, 2008 at 1:20 p.m. at the wheel of his car in a head-on collision near Lubień (near Nowy Tomyśl). He was buried on July 21st in Warsaw's Powązki Cemetery with the participation of his family, domestic and foreign politicians and the Warsaw population.

Political activities

Geremek was a member of the communist PVAP from 1950 to 1968 . He left the party because of the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops in Czechoslovakia. In 1980 he was an advisor to Solidarność . After martial law was imposed in 1981 , he was interned.

In 1989 he took part in the round table talks. From 1990 he was a member of the liberal parties Unia Demokratyczna (UD) and its successor party Unia Wolności (UW). From 2000 to 2001 he led the UW as party chairman. From 1989 to 2001 Geremek was a member of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland, including Chairman of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Chairman of the Committee on European Law. From 1997 to 2000 he was Polish Foreign Minister in the Buzek government . In 1998 he was awarded the Charlemagne Prize for his services to European unification .

In 2002 Bronisław Geremek spoke in front of the German Bundestag on the occasion of the commemoration day for the commemoration of the victims of National Socialism . Since the beginning of the 6th electoral term of the European Parliament in 2004, Geremek was a member of the European Parliament ( MEP ) for the left-wing liberal party Partia Demokratieyczna (DP). The MEPs of the Partia Demokratyczna were members of the European Liberal Group Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE). Geremek was a member of the ALDE parliamentary group executive committee; in 2004 he was a candidate of the European Liberals for the office of President of the European Parliament. He was a member of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs , the Committee on Foreign Affairs and a member of the delegation to the EU-Russia Parliamentary Cooperation Committee.

Geremek was a declared opponent of the planned Berlin center against evictions . He was a supporter of the international campaign founded in April 2007 for a parliamentary assembly at the United Nations .

From an obituary

“Geremek was an unshakable European who paved Poland's way into NATO and the EU with his great international reputation. […] Geremek was a deeply liberal man who always despised the art of smooth lies and the abrupt change of front of the post-communist turn-necks. Whether foreign minister […], lecturer or listener, the Polish historian has remained an open, friendly bridge-builder, a liberal European, in whatever capacity. […] At the time of the great sell-off of European values ​​and the rise of streamlined opportunists, the masks of politicians are falling from Berlin to Warsaw, from Vienna to Budapest. Bronislaw Geremek never wore a mask. "

- Paul Lendvai

Orders and awards (selection)

• Order of the White Eagle (Poland)
• Officer of the Legion of Honor (France)
• Knight of the National Order of Merit (France)
• Grand Officer of the Order of Freedom (Portugal)
• 1996 Grand Cross of Merit with Star (Germany)
• Grand Cross of the Order of Leopold II (Belgium)
• 2002 Commander with the Star of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary
• Order Pour le mérite for Sciences and Arts (Germany)
• In 1998 Bronisław Geremek was awarded the Aachen Charlemagne Prize.
• In 2006 he received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Cultural Studies at the Viadrina European University in Frankfurt (Oder) .
• Honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
• In 2006 he was awarded the Marion Dönhoff Prize .

Posthumous honors

On January 14, 2009, the European Parliament announced that the main courtyard of its official meeting building, the “Immeuble Louise Weiss” in Strasbourg , would henceforth be named “Bronisław-Geremek- Agora ” ( Agora Bronisław Geremek ). The agora was inaugurated on April 21, 2009.

Fonts (selection)

• History of Poverty: Misery and Mercy in Europe , Artemis-Verlag, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-7608-1917-6 .
• Inutiles au monde. Vagabonds et marginaux en Europe aux XIVe-XVIe siècle , Paris 1980.
• The Common Roots of Europe , Polity Press, Cambridge, 1996.

literature

• Bronisław Geremek , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 43/2008 of October 21, 2008, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
• Vetter, Reinhold: Bronislaw Geremek. The strategist of the Polish revolution , Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-8305-3251-4 .

Web links

Commons : Bronisław Geremek  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Interview with Bronislaw Geremek in June 2008 CVCE
• Literature by and about Bronisław Geremek in the catalog of the German National Library
• Personal website of the MP (Polish)
• Entry on Bronisław Geremek in the European Parliament 's database of deputies
• VoteWatch.eu: Bronisław Geremek's voting behavior in the European Parliament (in English)
• Page about the Charlemagne Prize with photo and speech
• Speech on the candidacy for EP President on July 20, 2004
• Bronisław Geremek's party
• The Euros: Interview with Bronisław Geremek on the Lustration Act

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Place and time of the accident and photos (tvn24.pl)
2. ↑ Pogrzeb Bronisława Geremka Wprost
3. ↑ sticky note
4. ↑ Obituary for Bronislaw Geremek ( Memento of the original from August 3, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ International Charlemagne Prize in Aachen - Detail ( Memento of the original from November 26, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ↑ Signatory of the "Campaign for the establishment of a parliament at the United Nations" ( Memento of the original from August 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
7. ↑ Paul Lendvai : The man without a mask . In: Der Standard , July 17, 2008, p. 30.
8. ↑ “La cour Geremek”, relatio-europe.eu, January 14, 2009 ( memento of the original from February 26, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
9. ^ Address of the President of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pöttering Gazeta.pl