Willi Steiner: a Personal Appreciation

Extract

I first met Willi Steiner in 1960 when I joined the library staff of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, where he was a frequent visitor in his capacity as Assistant Editor of the Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals. He was extremely short-sighted and my first view of him was in the slightly undignified posture he had to adopt to read titles on the bottom shelves. But one of his many endearing attributes was that he never stood on his dignity and he would have been highly amused if he had caught his reflection in a mirror. Nor did he ever complain about his handicap beyond the very occasional rueful comment when he sometimes had to guess who had spoken to him. He did not allow it to deflect him from his many scholarly pursuits and personal interests and, happily, towards the end of his career, his sight was so much improved by an operation to his eyes that he only required spectacles for reading.