Poland's former Minister of Foreign Affairs Stefan Meller has died after a long ailment. He was 66 years old.
Danuta Isler reports
Born in France on 4 July 1942, Stefan Meller was a historian, a diplomat, a poet and academic teacher. A graduate of the faculty of history of Warsaw University he worked at the Polish Foreign Ministry since 1992. He was foreign affairs minister from October 2005 to April 2006 in the conservative government of Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz but stepped down in protest when populist and nationalist parties joined the government coalition. He also served as Poland's ambassador to France and Russia. This is how Stanislaw Komorowski, undersecretary of state in the defense ministry, who worked with Stefan Meller in the foreign ministry remembers him.
'I was privileged to work with Stefan Meller from the very beginning when he came to the foreign office. Professor Stefan Meller was a very distinguished diplomat but I would like to emphasise that he was a fantastic human being with something what I would call an inside light. He was always with great sense of humour, with great knowledge which he was able to share with us. It's a great loss not only for the diplomatic world but for all of us as human beings.'
In the 1970s and 1980s Stefan Meller was engaged in the democratic opposition movement. He was also an editor-in-chief of a Polish magazine Mowia Wieki. Awarded by France for popularising its culture Stefan Meller also published poetry. Only a week ago his first book The World According to Meller. Life and History: Towards Freedom ("Świat według Mellera. Życie i historia: ku wolności") hit the stores. This is the first of the two volumes of a vast interview with the former Foreign Minister conducted by Michał Komar.
'What was really great about him was the fact that he was a proponent of the keep-smiling policy which helped him when he struggled with excruciating pain. I would also say that he was a man of great courage and many, many talents. He was a poet, a historian, a writer and a translator. His versatility was amazing. He was also able to look at the world believing he could understand the things he was seeing. It's a great loss that he's no longer with us.'
Analysts and colleagues are unanimous that Stefan Meller was a very skilled and distinguished diplomat. Stanislaw Komorowski points to three areas he will be remembered most for:
'It was very important to develop better Polish-Franco but also with Germany and a lot happened during his tenure in Paris. Then he went to Moscow. That was extremely important because he was seen as an intellectual, very knowledgeable about the history and he was able to talk to Russian elite as equal partner, not just as a diplomat. He achieved a better understanding of Polish position in Moscow. And then as the foreign minister he was able to express Polish position in foreign relations in a very clear and strong way but never offending anybody.'
Stefan Meller was also an important role model for younger generations. European youth-oriented website Cafebabel.com called Stefan Meller "one of the most brilliant minds of his generation" while his death "a great loss for the Polish foreign policy thinking".