Public Lecture

Professor Bronislaw Geremek

Unification of Europe: the road from Yalta to Brussels

University Council Chambers, 6pm, Tuesday 14 October, 2003.

Sponsors: European Law Centre, Centre for European Studies

RSVP by 10 October 2003 to Kathleen Mastrogiacomo, Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052

Tel: 02 9385 2227

Email: c.mastrogiacomo@unsw.edu.au

Online registration: www.law.unsw.edu.au

BRONISLAW GEREMEK is the former Foreign Minister of Poland and one of the world’s most eminent scholars of medieval European history, especially of France and Poland.

He was a key intellectual adviser to the Solidarity trade union in Poland and chaired the Committee for Political Reform in the negotiations with Polish communist leaders at the 1989 Round Table talks, which ushered in the end of communism in Europe. Since the collapse of communism, he has been one of the major public intellectual figures and one of the most distinguished public intellectuals and statesman, in Poland and also in the forging of the new Europe. He was the key figure in negotiating the acceptance of Poland into NATO, and the European Union. He has been an unwavering supporter of democratic principles, national independence and the principles of liberty. There are few more distinguished in the world.

He has taught at the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Sorbonne, Collège de France and other European and American universities. He is the author of numerous publications translated into many languages. The extraordinary international stature of Professor Geremek is attested to by the numerous international honours he has received, including fifteen honorary doctorates, several from the greatest universities in the world among them Columbia and Brandeis Universities in the United States, the Sorbonne, the University of Bologna, the Free University of Berlin - and the other awards that have been bestowed upon him, inter alia, Officer of the Légion d’Honneur from France, the Grosses Verdienstkreuz mit Stern des Verdienstordens der Bundesrepublik from Germany, and many other awards of the highest order. He will be awarded an honorary doctorate of laws from our university at the Law graduation earlier on 14 November.

Among the many prestigious organisations and associations to which he belongs are: Academia Europea, Académie Universelle des Cultures, Royal Historical Society, PEN Club, Council on Foreign Relations Independent Task Force on Threats to Democracy, International Crisis Group, Commission on Human Security, International UNESCO Scientific Committee, Reflection group about the spiritual dimension of Europe to European Commission. He recently became the head of the School of European Civilization at the College of Europe, Polish campus.

His books include:

Paid labour in the craft industry of Paris, from the XII to the XIV^h centuries 1962
(French, Italian translations)
People, Goods, Money, co-author with K.Piesowicz 1968
People on the Margin in Paris of the middle ages 1971
(French, English translations; award of the Academie Francaise, 1976)
Everyday Life in the Paris of Francois Villon 1972
(Italian translation)
The Useless of the World. Vagabonds and marginals in Europe from the 14^th to the 16^th centuries Paris 1980 (original in French, translated into Italian)
Cultural history of medieval Poland (co-author) 1985
Mercy and the Gallows 1989 (French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Japanese, English translations)
The world of the beggars’ opera 1989 (Italian, French, Spanish, Dutch translations)
Democracy in Europe 1994 (with Ralph Dahrendorf and Francois Furet)
Communal Passions 1993 (with Georges Duby, original in French, translations into Portuguese and Italian)