Eulogy by Guy Leech

The life of my Uncle Hansi, John, spanned three quarters of the 20th Century and a quarter of the 21st. In many ways, his life was moulded by the central trauma of the 20th century, World War 2 and its aftermath. He was born in Potsdam in 1925. His mother came from a formerly Jewish family and his father was a Protestant German Baron. Both parents were writers and anti Nazi. His father died in 1935 when Hansi was ten, and in April 1939, aged just 14, he left Germany for England, thanks to a charity which introduced him to and placed him with the Leech family, where he became a brother to my father who was just a year older than him. At the last minute, his mother came too, but not his older sister Finette who finally got to England with three year old Johnny just after the War; tragically Finette died of TB weeks after being reunited with her family.

Hansi could have followed my father to Oxford, from where he, my Father, became a Medieval Historian and academic, but Hansi felt obliged to defer to my Grandfather’s wishes – he was an engineer and a self made man - so Hansi took Articles and trained as an engineer. In one of several engineering jobs, he worked for some time in Calcutta in the 1950s for the Indian Patent Stone Company making, among other structures, prestressed concrete pylons for electrification, and only this year, explained to me that after he had left, his successors kept using too much water in the mix and the pylons collapsed, as then did the company. My nephew Dan here, also an engineer and an expert in concrete, will explain why, later if anyone wants to know.

We all knew Hansi later in life when his career path had changed, but I’ve picked out these roots in his childhood and early working life because I think that they were profound influences on what he later did. His working life with the Commonwealth Development Corporation was a practical one – they invested in the poorer Commonwealth countries and he was involved in a number of agricultural and business projects, practical enterprises.

Later his role at the CDC was a diplomatic one as External Relations Director. His diplomatic skills were supreme, in that role and in all his activities, and if they hadn’t been deployed in the Development branch of the British Government, he might have prospered too in the Foreign Office, although I suspect that he would not have wanted to represent the views of all British Governments. He had strong respect for British institutions, its rule of law and its Establishment, his beloved Travellers’ Club for example, but he did not always see the world as they did.

He became a writer, like his parents, especially after retiring from the CDC aged 60, 39 years ago. He was an enthusiastic supporter of and pamphlet writer for the Federal Trust which pre-dated the Common Market and the European Union; it was founded in 1945 and promoted a united Europe but a Federal one. To his great joy, the former came to pass but to his disappointment, not the latter.

To anyone whose family had been fractured onto opposite sides by the War as his was, the peaceful unification of western and central Europe since then has been a triumph, and, especially for his generation, not one to be taken for granted the way we sometimes do now.

Another great pillar preserving post 1945 peace in Europe has been NATO, and Hansi devoted an enormous amount of meticulous effort to West-West Agenda, a group he founded in the 1990s whose meetings he ran for over ten years. At these, US and European defence strategists and military leaders met to discuss transatlantic military co-operation. In 1991 he published “Halt! Who goes where? The future of NATO in the new Europe”, he edited and contributed to a Federal Trust book which came out in 2002 called “Whole and free: NATO, EU enlargement and transatlantic relations” and, also in 2002, he published “Asymmetries of Conflict: war without death”, an extraordinarily prescient book about modern warfare and other means of conflict between nations and groups, and how to counter and minimise them. In spite of their grim sounding subjects, these were hopeful books; he was an optimist and believed in the essential goodness of human nature, he expected it and brought it out from those around him.

Perhaps because his own Jewish heritage had become so dangerous to disclose in his childhood in 1930s Germany, and perhaps also because of becoming a member of the rather reserved Leech family, Hansi did not usually let one part of his life spill over to others. His daughter Caroline and I have found a number of times that there are stories of his life he has told one of us which the other doesn’t know. He published an autobiography, “Too many lives” in 2017 which is fascinating and tells many stories from his life, but not all of them, as I discovered nine months ago when we spent weeks together happily clearing out his office of 40 years and reminiscing.

What we all see in that book and what we all saw in our friendship with Hansi was his enormous humanity, charm and concern for others. He had huge generosity and courtesy; he was meticulous about small gestures, Christmas presents for example, and ready to give considered advice when called on, but never to offer it unasked. I found in very recent years that he would sometimes even take advice, at least on financial matters, but only after much discussion and thoughtful consideration.

In 1960, Hansi met Noretta. In January 1963 they married and ever since, nearly 62 years, his life has been anchored by her. They were in many ways very different but became totally complementary: he supported and loved her, and she him. As most of you know, in 1991 his present to her on her 60th birthday was the foundation of the Keyboard Charitable Trust. He was then my age now: 66, and here we are 33 years later able to look back on a record of the huge success of the charity. Of all Hansi’s enterprises and achievements, it was the one where he combined forces most with Noretta. It will carry on long into the future and it will be a legacy both of them can be proud of.

I once asked Hansi about his religion. He could display great spirituality and awareness of religious faiths, but where did he stand himself? Sometimes that sort of question did not elicit an entirely intelligible answer from him. But this time, he thought for a bit and then he was clear: he said that he had Jewish antecedents on his mother’s side, was brought up Protestant, his first wife, Mair, Caroline’s mother, was a Welsh Methodist, and finally he had become Catholic and married a Catholic. Having sampled all these, his view was that his favourite religion was Buddhism. With apologies Father Michael, but in his 20s he was an enthusiastic member of the World Congress of Faiths.

In so many aspects of his life, he lived, worked and knew so many different cultures and he knew them well. He fitted into them all, not as a chameleon but as himself. He had many lives, but not too many, and has ended his long life peacefully, as he lived, with much love, given freely by him and to him.