The InterDependent

There it sat in January 2010: the second edition of the Concise Encyclopedia of the United Nations, its 900-page-plus contributions written by an idealistic bunch of UN people, as I like to call all those who work at the UN or do research on it -- and just a free copy of the book as their reward.

The contributors, who consist of former and active UN officials and UN diplomats, professors, lecturers, students, journalists and nongovernmental organization folks, are not the usual encyclopedia team you might expect. This was a team with the perfect mixture of practical experience and political theory to address the topic, offering many perspectives on the UN. What an adventure in bookmaking lay behind me!

Evan Schneider/UN Photo

The Concise Encyclopedia on the United Nations has an entry on disarmament. Here, participants pose at a conference in Mexico City last year on the subject.

Twenty-five years earlier, I had only the common person’s knowledge of the organization, but I also had an idea: being a grammar-school teacher in Berlin for history, social studies and English, I decided to write a doctoral thesis on international politics as a “relaxing hobby”; doing research in a new field of knowledge for me is like adventure travel in unknown territory, a good contrast to the routine work in my job as teacher.

My supervisor at the Free University of Berlin recommended the research subject, the UN debate on the relationship between disarmament and development, and I agreed. In writing my thesis I got to know many cosmopolitan pragmatic idealists in the UN context, and I developed a strong interest in its puzzling system of institutions and colorful variety of people, all of them somehow united by the conviction that their work makes sense in the long run. Thus, having completed my thesis in 1987, I started writing books, book contributions and journal articles on the UN, attempting to make it better known to the public in the German-speaking countries --- Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany.

When I became more familiar with the UN book market, I discovered that there were many high-brow academic publications but no easy-to-understand comprehensive encyclopedia on the world body. So I developed the concept of such a book, containing precise information but also evaluative remarks and critical discourse, a book scholarly enough for academic lecturers and students, yet practical enough for quick reference by journalists and teachers. Luckily, I found a German publishing house, Oldenbourg Verlag in Munich, which was ready to journey into this unknown territory with me in early 1998.

Then the real adventure began: looking for contributors with academic UN expertise and/or direct experience in the UN and willing to write for no payment, just for copies of the completed book. From my work on the UN books so far, I knew about 20 such scholars and I invited them to join, and most of them did. To enlarge the team, I wrote letters to other UN scholars whom I knew from the UN literature and also asked former and active UN officials and diplomats.

Those who agreed to take part recommended others, and the numbers grew quickly. So I did not have much trouble finding more than 80 contributors, mainly from Germany, but also from Austria, the Netherlands, Norway and Britain. I discussed the entries with them and in the end worked with a colorful list that reflected the UN’s heterogeneous spirit.

Anna Volger

Helmut Volger has edited three volumes of entries on the UN, which he compiled into tomes of about 900 pages each. He is shown here in his home office in Berlin.

The authors, among them “Mr. United Nations,” Sir Brian Urquhart, worked with great inspiration and diligence, and it was fun for me to edit the book on my home computer, in Berlin. Editing meant first translating the contributions of the English-speaking authors, like Theodoor van Boven, into German; in this regard I took advantage of my university education in English and my part-time job as student research assistant at the John F. Kennedy Institute of the Free University Berlin, where I was in charge of book acquisitions and assisting visiting professors from the US.

Second, it meant writing e-mail letters to the contributors, in which I suggested slight changes or additions to their texts, providing more details and critical comments. All in all, it was a fruitful correspondence with every writer.

Two years later, in early 2000, the German edition, Lexikon der Vereinten Nationen, came out. It was welcomed by scholars and by the public and sold quite well. Everyone appreciated its readability and usefulness.

Having completed the first part of my adventure, I turned to the English-speaking book market and was surprised to find that there was no comparable work in that language. So the second adventure started: now retired and with more leisure time before me, I decided to edit an English-licensed edition of the German Lexikon, no small challenge. Once more, I started looking for a suitable publisher and found a Dutch one, Kluwer Law International, eager to realize the project. I succeeded in cajoling my German contributors to translate their entries in return for a free copy of the book, and I compiled the English edition on my home computer, the texts being fine-tuned by a native-speaking copy editor.

The book, A Concise Encyclopedia of the United Nations, with a preface by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, was published in summer 2002 and reviewed by expert critics as an “excellent resource for anyone serious about the United Nations” (Jeff Laurenti, Security Dialogue, 2003).

The book sold well - about 500 copies - and since this first English edition sold out by the summer of 2006, Kluwer invited me to edit a second revised edition of the English version. Thus adventure three began: persuading the contributors to revise their entries of the first English edition, again for the modest reward of a free copy.

Once more this wonderful bunch - complemented by some younger authors - wrote either revised entries or additions to their original entries. I compiled the encyclopedia again on my home computer, two copy editors perfected the text, and my wife, Anna, designed the layout.

In early 2010 the second revised edition of the Concise Encyclopedia of the United Nations came out, a 980-page compendium, for $363, published by Brill Academic Publishers, who had taken over the imprint from Kluwer. (For more information on buying the book, go to http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=33667.)

Although the book was a lot of work, I enjoyed making the three editions, and I learned a lot about the UN from editing the texts, on topics ranging from disarmament to the Security Council. I also got acquainted with a large group of UN devotees through meetings, phone calls and e-mail letters, people whose inspiration and belief in the UN is so strong that they walk an extra mile to put such a project into practice.
I remember one such phone conversation in 1999, with Inge Kaul, who was director of the UN Development Program’s Office of Development Studies in New York at the time.

Kaul and I talked about her work in the early 1990s, when she headed a team of young inspired researchers who were writing a groundbreaking study, the “Human Development Report,” integrating social, cultural, medical and ecological aspects into what was then a field of purely economic reports on development. In writing this new type of report they had developed completely new methodological approaches, and as a consequence, they faced severe criticism from within the UN and from politicians and scholars in the member countries for their work. But they succeeded eventually in establishing a new way of looking at development, of making “human development” a standard term in science and, even more important, in politics. The "Human Development" reports have been published annually since and are now an indispensable tool for every development politician worldwide.

This conversation with Kaul helped me to understand how difficult and challenging the work of the people at the UN is and how hard it is to evaluate the amount of courage and toughness that is needed to do such a job.