* 29.03.1929 in Tallinn
† 14.03.2006 in Tallinn
President of the Republic
06.10.1992-08.10.2001
The President of the Republic of Estonia 1992-2001
(auf Deutsch)
Lennart Meri was born on March 29, 1929, in Tallinn in
the family of the Estonian diplomat and later Shakespeare translator Georg
Meri. With his family, Lennart Meri left Estonia at an early age and had to
study abroad, in nine different schools and in four different languages. His
warmest memories are from his school years in Lycée Janson de Sailly in Paris.
The family was in Tallinn at the time when Estonia was
occupied by the Soviet armed forces. In 1941, the Meri family was deported to
Siberia along with thousands of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians sharing the
same fate. Heads of the family were separated from their families and shut into
concentration camps where few survived. At the age of twelve, Lennart Meri
started his career as a lumberman. He has also worked as a professional potato
peeler and a rafter.
The Meri family survived and found their way back to
Estonia, where Lennart Meri graduated cum laude from the Faculty of History and
Languages of Tartu University in 1953. The Soviet administration did not allow
him to work as a historian. Lennart Meri found work as a dramatist in the
Vanemuine, the oldest theatre of Estonia, and later on as a producer of radio
plays in the Estonian broadcasting.
After the trip to the Tian-Shan Mountains in the
Central Asia and the old Islamic centres in the Kara-Kum Desert in 1958,
Lennart Meri wrote his first book, which met the warm reception of the readers.
Already as a student, Lennart Meri had had to earn his living with writing,
after his father had been arrested by the Soviet powers for the third time.
With the help of his younger brother who had to quit his studies and take a job
as a taxi-driver, he managed to support their mother and to complete his
studies. And yet it was only through his first book that Lennart Meri
discovered his true calling. For a quarter of the century he wandered alone or
arranged expeditions to the regions of the Soviet Union that were the hardest
to reach, and where he was fascinated by the cultures of small ethnic groups, the
history of the discovery and colonisation of Siberia and the constantly
aggravating economic and ecological conflict between the local needs and the
planned economy of the Soviet Moscow. The books and films born of these travels
managed to penetrate the iron curtain and have been translated into a dozen
languages. The film "The Winds of the Milky Way", shot in
co-operation with Finland and Hungary, was banned in the Soviet Union, but won
a silver medal on the New York Film Festival. In Finnish schools, his films and
texts were used as study materials. In 1986, Lennart Meri was awarded the
Honorary Doctorate of the Helsinki University. He had become a member of the
Estonian Writers' Union already earlier, in 1963. In the Seventies, he was
elected the Honorary Member of the Finnish Literary Society.
Between his travels, Lennart Meri translated the works
of Remarque, Graham Greene, Vercors, Boulle and Solzhenitsyn. At the time of
the totalitarian russification campaigns, Meri's literary works, films and
translations significantly contributed to the preservation of the Estonian
national identity. His "Silverwhite", which became the most popular
of his works, an extensive reconstruction of the history of Estonia and the
Baltic Sea region, depicted Estonians as free people in Northern Europe, as
active agents in an open world.
After more than twenty years of expectations, the
Soviet administration finally gave the permission for Lennart Meri to travel
behind the iron curtain, and Meri persistently used the opportunities open to
him in Finland to remind the Free world of the existence of Estonia. He
established trustful relationships with the politicians, journalists and the
Estonians who had fled from the occupation. He was the first Estonian to take
abroad the protest against the Soviet plan of mining phosphate in Estonia,
which would have rendered a third of the country uninhabitable.
In Estonia, environment protection soon grew into
"the Singing Revolution", which was led by the Estonian
intellectuals. Lennart Meri's speech "Have Estonians Got Hope"
focused on the existential problems of the nation and had strong repercussions
also abroad. Lennart Meri's shift of focus from literary to political
activities was smooth and yet antedated the political events. In 1988, he
founded the non-governmental Estonian Institute to promote cultural contacts
with the West and to send the Estonian students to study abroad. Estonia's
cultural missions opened under the umbrella of the Estonian Institute in
Copenhagen, Stockholm, London, Bonn, Paris and Helsinki functioned as embassies
and became officially so in August 1991, when the democratic West restored
diplomatic relations with the Republic of Estonia.
Neither for Estonia herself nor for the West had the
Soviet occupation disrupted the continuity of the Republic of Estonia or
eliminated her international obligations and rights. Therefore, Estonia does
not belong to the "new democracies", as the Republic of Estonia was
an active member of the League of Nations already in 1921. Lennart Meri signed
the instruments for the restoration of diplomatic relations already as the
Minister of Foreign Affairs. To this post he had been appointed on April 12,
1990, by Edgar Savisaar, leader of the Popular Front, after the first
non-communist elections. Prior to this, Lennart Meri and other authors had
already published the collection of documents titled "1940 in
Estonia" (1989), which unsuccessfully attempted to convince the Soviet
members of the Parliament that the occupation and Sovietisation of Estonia were
based on the criminal Hitler-Stalin pact dividing Europe between the two
totalitarian regimes.
As the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lennart Meri's
first task was to create the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to employ studious
young people, and to establish a steady communication channel to the West, and
at the same time, to represent Estonia on the more important international
conferences. He participated in the CSCE Conferences in Copenhagen, New York,
Paris, Berlin and Moscow, on the foundation conference of the Council of the
Baltic Sea Countries, had several meetings with the American and European Heads
of State and Ministers of Foreign Affairs, and was the first East European
guest to give a presentation at the NATO Headquarters in Brussels.
After a brief period as an Ambassador of Estonia to
Finland (23.04.1992 - 10.10.1992) Lennart Meri was elected the President of the
Republic of Estonia. Lennart Meri was sworn to the office of the President on
October 6, 1992. On September 20, 1996, Lennart Meri was elected the President
of the Republic of Estonia for the second term of office.
During his work as a writer and a politician, Lennart
Meri was elected a Foreign Member of the Kalevala Society, a Corresponding
Member of the Finnish Literary Society; he was also a Member of the Board of
the European Academy of Arts, Sciences and Humanities and Co-President of its
Committee of Honour, and a Member of the Board of the International Council of
the Memorial Foundation for the Victims of Communism and Member of the
Inter-Parliamentary Council against Antisemitism. As earlier, he was a member of
the Estonian Writers Union, the Estonian Cinematographer's Union and the
Estonian PEN, and also patron of the Tartu University Foundation. Lennart Meri
was awarded the Coudenhove-Kalergi European Award and the Prize of Freedom of
the Liberal International and decorations of several countries, he was also
elected the European of the Year in 1998. In 2001, Lennart Meri was elected a
full member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences. From 2002 to 2003, he was the
Estonian Government's representative to the Convention on the Future of Europe.
Lennart Meri was married twice. His second wife Helle
Meri (1949) worked as an actress in the Estonian Drama Theatre until 1992.
Lennart Meri's first wife Regina Meri emigrated to Canada in 1987. Lennart Meri
had three children – sons Mart (1959) and Kristjan (1966) and daughter Tuule
(1985) – and four grandchildren.
Lennart Meri is buried at the Metsakalmistu cemetery
in Tallinn.
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