Seán Lester

Seán Lester (born September 28, 1888 in Carrickfergus , Ulster , † June 13, 1959 in Galway , Republic of Ireland ) was an Irish journalist, politician and diplomat; from 1940 to 1946 he was the last general secretary of the League of Nations .

Lester grew up as a Protestant Irishman in a unionist environment in Belfast , but he soon developed into an ardent Irish nationalist . He became a member of the Gaelic League and the Irish Republican Brotherhood at a very young age and wrote as a journalist for the Irish independence movement. After Ireland's declaration of independence, which was preceded by the Anglo-Irish Treaty , Lester became director of the public relations department of the Office of Foreign Affairs of the Irish Free State in 1923 .

In 1929 the government of the Free State sent him as envoy to the League of Nations in Geneva . Originally Lester was only supposed to stay briefly in Geneva, but he was then appointed permanent representative of his home country to the League of Nations. He made a name for himself as the voice of the interests of minorities in negotiations and decisions of the League of Nations, so that he was chosen when in 1933 a new High Commissioner for the Free City of Danzig had to be appointed.

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In 1934 Lester took up his post in Danzig. He took a clear stand against discrimination against Jews, which is why it became increasingly difficult for him to exercise his office, as he was boycotted by representatives of the German Reich, such as the representatives of the NSDAP in Danzig . He gave up in 1937 and returned to Geneva as Deputy Secretary General of the Confederation. His successor in Danzig was the Swiss historian, diplomat and later functionary of the Swiss Red Cross, Carl Jacob Burckhardt , who was closer to the National Socialists.

After the German victory over France in the summer of 1940, the incumbent French General Secretary Joseph Avenol announced his resignation in a letter to the League of Nations. On September 2, 1940, Lester was appointed Executive Secretary General of the League of Nations. He headed the largely incapable of acting organization through the Second World War and organized its absorption into the United Nations in 1946/47 .

Lester was married and had three daughters.

literature

• Stephen A. Barcroft: The international civil servant. The League of Nations career of Sean Lester, 1929-1947. Dublin 1973, (Dublin, Trinity College, Ph.D. thesis, 1973).
• Douglas Gageby : The last secretary general. Sean Lester and the League of Nations. Town House and Country House, Dublin 1999, ISBN 1-86059-108-6 .
• Arthur W. Rovine : The first fifty years. The secretary-general in world politics 1920–1970. Sijthoff, Leyden 1970, ISBN 90-218-9190-5 .

Web links

• Newspaper article about Seán Lester in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ James Barros : Betrayal from Within. Joseph Avenol, Secratary-General of the League of Nations, 1933-1940. Yale University Press, New Haven CT et al. 1969, p. 253 ff.