Bronisław Geremek

Bronisław Geremek
Bronisław Geremek in May 2004.
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland 5th Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Third Republic of Poland
In office 31 October 1997 – 30 June 2000
President	Aleksander Kwaśniewski
Prime Minister	Jerzy Buzek
Preceded by	Dariusz Rosati
Succeeded by	Władysław Bartoszewski
Chairman of the Freedom Union
In office 18 December 2000 – 14 October 2001
Preceded by	Leszek Balcerowicz
Succeeded by	Władysław Frasyniuk
Personal details
Born	Benjamin Lewertow (1932-03-06)6 March 1932 Warsaw, Poland
Died	13 July 2008(2008-07-13) (aged 76) Lubień, Poland
Political party	Freedom Union, Partia Demokratyczna – demokraci.pl. (Democratic Party)
Spouse(s)	Hanna Geremek
Profession	Historian

Professor Bronisław Geremek [brɔˈɲiswaf ɡɛˈrɛmɛk] (born Benjamin Lewertow; 6 March 1932 - 13 July 2008) was a Polish social historian and politician.

Geremek was born in Warsaw on 6 March 1932. His father, a fur merchant, was murdered in Auschwitz. His mother and he were smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 and were sheltered by Stefan Geremek. Geremek later married Bronisław's mother and Bronisław was further raised in a Roman Catholic tradition. In his adult life he considered himself neither a Jew nor a Catholic. His grandfather was a maggid, his brother Jerry, living in New York is a Jew and his sons living in Poland are Roman Catholics.

In 1954 Bronisław Geremek graduated from the Faculty of History at the Warsaw University, and in 1956–1958 he completed postgraduate studies at the École pratique des hautes études in Paris. He completed his PhD in 1960 and in 1972 he was granted a postdoctoral degree at the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN). In 1989 he was appointed associate professor.

The chief domain of Geremek's scholarly work was research on the history of culture and medieval society. His scholarly achievements included numerous articles and lectures, as well as ten books, which have been translated into ten languages. His doctoral thesis (1960) concerned the labour market in medieval Paris, including prostitution. His postdoctoral thesis (1972) concerned underworld groups in medieval Paris.

Almost the whole of Geremek's scholarly career was connected with the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences, where he worked from 1955 to 1985. However, from 1960 to 1965 he was a lecturer at the Sorbonne in Paris and the manager of the Polish Culture Centre of that university. Geremek was given honorary degrees by the University of Bologna, Utrecht University, the Sorbonne, Columbia University and Jagiellonian University in Kraków. In 1992 he was designated visiting professor at the Collège de France. He was a member of Academia Europea, the PEN Club, the Société Européenne de Culture, fellow of Collegium Invisibile and numerous other societies and associations.