Seán Lester
Seán Lester ( born September 28, 1888 in Carrickfergus, Ulster, † 13 June 1959, Galway, Republic of Ireland) was an Irish journalist, politician and diplomat; 1940-1946 he was the last General Secretary of the League of Nations.
Lester grew up as a Protestant Irishman in an environment of environment Unionists in Belfast, yet he developed early a fervent Irish nationalists. He was at a very young age, a member of the Gaelic League and the Irish Republican Brotherhood and wrote as a journalist for the Irish independence movement. After the declaration of independence of Ireland, which was preceded by the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Lester in 1923 Director of the Publicity Department of the Office of Foreign Affairs of the Irish Free State.
1929, the government of the Free State sent him as ambassador to the League of Nations in Geneva. Originally Lester should only short stay in Geneva, however, he was appointed permanent representative of his home determined at the League of Nations. He made the voice of the minority interests in negotiations and decisions of the League of Nations in the limelight, so the choice fell on him when in 1933 a new High Commissioner for the Free City of Danzig had to be appointed.
In 1934, Lester at his office in Gdansk. He was referring clear position against the discrimination against the Jews, so it became increasingly difficult for him to perform his duties because he was boycotted by the representatives of the German Empire, as the representatives of the Nazi Party in Danzig. He gave up in 1937 and returned as Deputy Secretary-General of the Federation in Geneva. His successor in Gdansk was the Swiss historian, diplomat and later official of the Swiss Red Cross Carl Jacob Burckhardt, who was the Nazis closer.
After the German victory over France in the summer of 1940, the reigning French Secretary Joseph avenol explained in a letter to the League of Nations for his resignation. On September 2, 1940 Lester was appointed Acting Secretary General of the League of Nations. He led the largely incompetent organization to act by the time of World War II and organized 1946/47, their absorption into the United Nations.
Lester was married and had three daughters.