page_title: León de Greiff
section_title: Later life and death
hierarchical_section_title: León de Greiff / Later life and death
caption_attribution_description: Biblioteca León de Greiff, Medellín, Colombia
context_page_description: Francisco de Asís León Bogislao de Greiff Haeusler, was a Colombian poet known for his stylistic innovations and deliberately eclectic use of obscure lexicon. Best known simply as León de Greiff, he often used different pen names. The most popular were Leo le Gris and Gaspar Von Der Natch. De Greiff was one of the founders of Los Panidas, a literary and artistic group established in 1915 in the city of Medellín.
context_section_description: León de Greiff retired on October 1, 1963, and at that time he started to enjoy his modest pension after 34 years as a civil servant. No longer at the service of the government, de Greiff took an active interest in promoting literature and education in and out of the country.
  In 1965 de Greiff was awarded the Order of Boyaca with the rank of Commander, one of Colombia's highest honours. In 1974 he was made member correspondiente of the Academia Colombiana de la Lengua, and in 1974 honorary member of the Ministry of Culture’s Instituto Caro Y Cuervo. He also received various tributes including one from the Colombo-Argentinian Cultural Institute in 1955, (Instituto Cultural Colombo-Argentino), one from the National College of Journalists in 1961 (Colegio Nacional de Periodistas) presented by Gabriel García Márquez, an honoris causa doctorate in literature from the University of Valle on July 16, 1975, and in that same year another tribute from the National Association of Financial Institutions (Asociación Nacional de Instituciones Financieras, ANIF), presented to him by its then president Belisario Betancur. De Greiff traveled abroad, keeping with his cultural ambitions, and was part of the over 180 guest writers from 52 nations for the International Writer's Meeting organized by a West German writer's committee headed by Anna Seghers and Arnold Zweig in Berlin and Weimar. He also took part in the 1968 Cultural Congress of La Havana, where he was a judge in the Poetry Prize competition, as well as the 1970 Iberoamerican Community of Writers summit in Caracas, the Second Latin American Conference on Cultural Development and University Expansion in Mexico in 1972, and was part of the jury for the Quimantú (El Sol del Saber) Prize of Chile.
  In Venezuela, architect Carlos Celis Cepero created the León de Greiff Hispanic-American Prize of Poetry (Premio Hispanoamericano de Poesía León de Greiff) which was first awarded on May 5, 1956 to the Venezuelan poet Juan Manuel González.
  Upon his return to private life in Colombia, he remained involved with international political work. In 1967 he was elected President of the Colombo-Czechoslovak Friendship Association, and in 1971 elected President of the Colombo-Cuban Friendship Association (his son Axel would follow his father's steps by being elected President of the Swedish–Cuban Association), and was even invited to the inauguration of Mexican President Luis Echeverría Álvarez in 1970, and in 1972 was invited to Costa Rica by its President José Figueres Ferrer.
  León de Greiff died at the age 80 in the early hours of Sunday July 11, 1976 in his home in Bogotá. Shortly after his death, the National University renamed its Central Auditorium in his honor. It is now a National Monument and home of the Bogota Philharmonic. In 2007 when a new public library-park was built, the city choose to name the León de Grieff Library in his honor and to promote culture and education in the city.
caption: The León de Greiff Library and park designed by Giancarlo Mazzanti
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