Hiberno Goethe

Join us for the final episode of Hiberno Goethe with guest Dorothee Meyer-Holtkamp, the series producer and outreach coordinator of Near Media Co-op.

Host Ciarán chats with Dorothee about her growing up in a small town in north Germany and her roundabout journey that led her to Ireland in the late 1990s via Scotland and France. They reminisce about the series remembering guests that featured on the podcast and of course talk about some cultural similarities, differences and culinary specialities.

Ciaran chats to writer and publisher Elizabeth McSkeane about her Glaswegian upbringing, with pictures of the JFK, visits to Glasgow Celtic and St. Patrick's Day traditions. We hear Liz reading works by the Irish poet living in Germany, Jo Burns, from her latest collection of poetry Brink.

Liz has a passion for languages and different cultures. Feeling European, Irish and Scottish, it’s a wonderful benefit to be so mobile in Europe as if it is one country. We hear about Samuel Beckett's time in Germany in the 1930’s and the inspiration behind his most famous work Waiting for Godot. Liz tells us about her publishing company Turas Press and we get an insight into the running of a small publishing house.

This episode features multi-disciplinary artist Vera Klute. Growing up in a small village close to Dortmund in North Rhine Westphalia, Vera gives an insight to some of the area's traditions like the three day parading at the yearly Schützenfest and having antlers or stuffed ducks hanging on the walls of your home. For Vera you don’t need a degree to appreciate art, to decide whether you like something or not people should just go with their instinct. In the two person exhibition The Loneliness of Being German, Vera together with Thomas Brezig interrogates the issue of identity. Vera is part of the Women on Walls project, commissioned to create a bust of Dr Rosalind Franklin for the Long Room in Trinity College Dublin’s old library. She is the proud artist of the iconic Luke Kelly Statue at the Docklands in Dublin 1, an associate member of the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts, enjoys the flatness of Tudor portraits and is dying to go back to Rome to enjoy the city's marble statues and fountains. Vera’s signature dish is the Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte with cherries from Super Value. She spent 20 years in Dublin and is now home in County Kilkenny where she lives with her family.

On this month's Hiberno Goethe, Ciarán talks to physicist Stefan Hutzler. Stefan dressed up in traditional Bavarian costume at the 2015 Ireland Germany game with his sons, and didn't cheer when Ireland scored. Look out for the boys in red and white SSV Jahn Regensburg jerseys playing football in Dublin parks.

Stefan talks about Kepler and Oppenheimer, and the physics behind the Beijing Olympic Swimming Pool based on the ‘Weir Phelan structure’ made from TCD designed bubbles. We also learn how the Guinness head lasts longer than the Weissbier head because of the stability of the bubbles.

Stefan is a keen musician and has played in the Baggot Inn, he recites a couple of his songs for us, including one in 3 different languages. Stefan talks about the Beatles singing in German, and Kraftwerk singing in German and English. We hear how physics is connected to music and about how Einstein played the violin.

On this month's edition Ciaran is joined by actor, director and award winning writer for stage and screen, Stefanie Preissner. Stefanie was born in Germany but moved to Ireland as a child, and grew up in County Cork.

Stefanie chats with Ciaran about feeling German, reminisces about the scharfes S β and gets quite possessive about Ritter Sport Schokolade.

Stefanie was diagnosed with autism as an adult and she explains why girls and women are harder to diagnose. She chats about visiting Germany and how the German way of life makes her feel comfortable.

The Irish relationship with alcohol comes under scrutiny and Stefanie explains how she explores this relationship in her hit TV show Can't Cope, Won't Cope.

Stefanie talks about the differences between writing for TV and stage, and tells us some of her experiences in German theatres, including durational theatre. Check out her podcast Basically which seeks to explain complex things in a simple way!

Christoph chats with Ciarán about his journey to becoming a zoo director, from his early childhood interest in animals, his experiences while in Madagascar studying lemur monkeys and his time spent at Bristol Zoo.

They take a stroll through Dublin Zoo, discuss the difference between former east and west German zoos and how zoos have changed over the centuries, moving towards conservation organizations and trying to have a positive influence on animal welfare in the wild.

We hear about lemur monkeys, the topic of Christoph's Phd, gibbons, elephants, sea lions and that zoos today also are campaigners on sustainability with a positive impact on society through education and consumer power.

The main culinary delight from Germany Christoph misses is Bergische Waffeln. Christoph is a self confessed zoo nerd and he gives a fascinating insight into how these institutions care for animals on a day to day basis and how zoos can be catalysts for positive change in the future.

This episode features Dr Gisela Holfter, Professor of German at the University of Limerick and joint director for the Centre for Irish-German Studies, who grew up in the Bergisches Land close to Cologne.

Chatting with Ciarán about her time in Dublin, Belfast and later on in Limerick, the listeners are brought on a literary journey depicting brothers Grimm, Mann brothers, Küttner, Fürst Pückler-Muskau, Wilhelm von Humbold, and Johann Kaspar Zeuss to name a few.

Gisela tells us about Ireland being a sanctuary for refugees with Eamon De Valera's brainchild Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies allowing Irish universities to take in scholars from abroad and how the Hirsch Ribbon factory in Longford set up by Viennese Ernest Sonnenschein gave employment and training to local people.

We hear about the Centre for Irish-German Studies which marks its 25th anniversary in 2022, the Dánnerstag project bringing together Irish and German poetry and Limericker Literaturgespräche. Gisela recites Die Stadt by Theodor Storm and a quote of the German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier who recently visited the Centre for Irish-German Studies together with Irish president Michael D Higgins.

This episode features comedian Killian Sundermann and teacher and assistant principal Helmut Sundermann of the Deutsche St Killian in Dublin. Father and son are bringing us on a journey of their influences for a shared love for music, humour, football and food. We hear about the time Helmut met his wife Fiona, living in Wales and England before moving to Ireland and that Fiona’s mother Johanna is originally from Germany herself, having moved to Ireland post World War II.

Helmut and Killian talk about the beauty of different regions and small / medium size towns- Why move to Berlin when you can move to Badenkirchen or Gelsenkirchen? and the variety of accents, dialects and disposition of people- and local beer- that comes with different regions.

Helmut is reading Inschrift by Erich Fried, a paper clipping of the poem found in the belongings of father Karl Heinz who was an architect and town planner in Aachen, rebuilding destroyed areas and working in heritage preservation.

Having their own secret language allowed for father and son to communicate in their own way from an early age. They talk about the German sense of humour, music in both countries and German films. Cultural observations and its differences are the focus of Killian’s online comedy, check out Kuchen.

This episode features visual artist René Böll who is the son of Nobel prize winner for literature Heinrich Böll.

Born 1948 we hear about René’s growing up in the bombed city of Cologne and his memories of summers spent on Achill island in a house with no electricity apart from the kitchen. René tells us about shark hunters, in the 1960s Achill and how it felt more like a remote place. Ciaran and René talk about the 68 West German student movement and René remembers his visit to Prague together with his parents at the Prague spring 1968 witnessing Soviet invasion.

We hear about Heinrich’s controversial and at times provocative writing and the impact it had on the life of the family. The most celebrated novel Irish Journal received mixed but mostly very positive feedback and is still very popular today having sold over 2 million copies. René tells us about his mother Annemarie who was an English teacher, translator and interpreter and she met the Kelleher family from Kerry who sent many carepackets to Annemarie after the war ended.

René’s own work as a visual artist is influenced by Achill through its landscape, sky, colours and particular light. A recurring theme in René’s work is the Cillíní, the unofficial secret graveyards where sailors and children that are not baptised are buried.

We hear about other places that inspire René’s work- the beauty of Ecuador where he went with his wife who is originally from there many times and his liking for ink painting traditionally from China and Japan.

We hear a reading of his poem Under the Mackerel Sky and an excerpt of his father’s work Irisches Tagebuch.

The connection from the father Heinrich carries on to René who returns to Achill every year, for the Heinrich Böll memorial weekend in 2022.

Hugo Hamilton was our guest on this special edition of Hiberno Goethe. To celebrate 60 years of the Goethe-Institut Irland we were delighted to be joined by Hugo with a live audience in the Goethe Institute library.

Hugo first tells us about Speckled People, and about his upbringing, his mother who came here as an au pair, and met and married his father, an ardent Irish language revivalist. We hear about how growing up through Irish and German in Glasthule: “We were called Nazis and put on trial…the only places where I didn’t feel that were in Germany where the German past never came up and it was never mentioned in the Gaeltacht in Connemara, I felt very comfortable there and then we came back to Dublin and we were called Nazis again.” He tells how this made him feel like an outsider, and how his earlier books, like Headbanger, are about outsiders. He often felt like this, reading unusual Austrian novels by Thomas Bernhardt which weren't really a good conversation piece at Irish parties in the 1970s. Of course he talks about Heinrich Böll’s Irish Journal and the similarities between Böll’s Irish experience and his own mother’s, experiencing Ireland as post-war Rhineland Catholics. We hear about artist Joseph Beuys’ work in the North of Ireland during the troubles and Hamilton’s new book The Pages about the life of Joseph Roth, which he reads from.

In this episode Ciarán chats to his former lecturer and Professor of Modern Languages Dr. Arnd Witte. We first hear about Arnd's origins in Hiddigwardermoor where the one-teacher school had no running water. The conversation turns to the origin of Arnd's love of the English language coming not from literature but from Jim Morrison and the Rolling Stones.

Arnd lectured in Nigeria, where he met his wife. He saw a play there by Wole Soyinka, the first black African Nobel prize winner, and Soyinka himself was there. He is interested that some African commentators believe that the English language is a cultural time bomb in Africa, with it marginalising local languages and even pushing them to extinction. Arnd talks about his children being part Nigerian, part German, and part Irish and having a fluid cultural identity. The importance that language plays in cultural understanding and identity is a key theme in Arnd’s research.

Ciarán and Arnd chat about the Catholic Church’s influence in Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth when they were there together in the early 1990s, how Arnd replaced a lecturer from the DDR. Reflecting on his many years working at 3rd level he laments changes that have brought about a type of commodification of education.

Arnt reads from Hugo Hamilton and Georg Trakl.

This episode features Dublin writer and performer Mia Gallagher. Graduating at the time of recession in the late 1980s Mia is of a generation that was still emigrating and Dublin city a much more mono cultural place to live than we know it today. Having German roots allowed Mia to be in a position to observe and process life through another lens which fed into her creativity as an artist.

We hear about the journey of Mia’s paternal Oma/Grandmother, Liese Gerhard, who moved to Kilkenny in the 1930s to teach gymnastics at a girls school and a couple of years later marrying her husband. Mia also tells the story of Liese voting during the Nazi era and later living a social life in Waterford. The house in which Liese grew up at the seatown Warnemünde remained a place to return to for the family holding fond memories for Mia.

Mia tells us about her time as an au-pair in Freiburg and talks about speaking German with Germans who are too quick to use English, and ending up in a kind of ‘language stand-off’, with both parties determined to continue in their non-native language. We hear about a fondness for the Irish language despite her teacher, former minister Moira Geoghgan Quinn, calling her dunce at school.acting, performing and failing helped Mia in her writing, to understand characters inside out, the layers of consciousness and unconsciousness.

Mia reads the title story Shift of her short story collection, an excerpt of her second novel Beautiful pictures of the lost homeland and an excerpt of Altes Land by German author Dörte Hansen.

This episode features Jan Wagner, a north German literary critic, poet and translator who returned to Ireland at different times of his life- for travelling, studying at Trinity College, working as an artist in residence at the Boell Cottage on Achill island, reciting poetry in the bogs of Connemara. In Germany, Jan brings us to some lesser travelled destinations by Irish people: the Baltic islands of Ruegen and Hiddensee and the countryside of Uckermark in Brandenburg where one can go hiking in the company of two donkeys, as long as you adapt your pace to that of the animals.

Jan’s passion for poetry extends to listening to poetry in other languages as well as translating the work of some artists that have written in English. Writing is a very curious back and forth that involves critical thinking along with free wheeling; a joyful game of playing with language and a slow process of editing. Cutting away line after line; a poem can be left with only three lines that carry much more than the thirty lines written ahead. Everything is possible, you can expose your soul or use poetry as a means of a great masquerade.

Jan recites the poem The owl, Part one by Matthew Sweany, one of the artists whose work Jan has translated, debating words and meaning over food and wine in Berlin Kreuzberg.

We hear Jan Wagner reciting also his own poetry: Teebeutel and Essay on soap.

This episode features Emily Kraft, 19 years old Irish international football player who is at home in Sutton, Dublin North as well as in Gernsheim, close to Frankfurt am Main. Emily is a successful and ambitious footballer with Eintracht Frankfurt, who is also currently studying for her ‘Abitur’ (German equivalent of Leaving Certificate).

This episode features Siobhán Armstrong, one of Europe’s foremost historical harpists. In the late 1980’s after finishing college Siobhán moved to Sindelfingen, a little town close to Stuttgart, to start a harp department in the newly built Music School.

In this episode Ciarán meets visual artist Gerard Byrne who teaches at the Städelschule in Frankfurt. The conversation rambles from Brecht to Beckett and Kasper König. We hear about the Städelschule and its place as one of the most influential art schools in Germany, and that having a collection of internationally renowned colleagues makes it an exciting place to work. Gerard and Ciarán chat about Gerard not being a natural Germano-phile, but perhaps still with an early appreciation for Kraftwerk, as general left-field entity, but he does understand Germany as having a central role in the development of contemporary arts in the 20th Century. They wonder at the fact that visual art enjoys a more prominent place in Germany than in Ireland and the various socio-political reasons behind that, and Dokumenta in Kassel as a celebration of the importance of art in Germany, where even the taxi drivers want to talk about art.

This episode features Donnchadh Morgan, barrister at law, son of the late Dermot Morgan and German mother Susanne Morgan (nee Garmatz). Donnchadh tells us of his experience of his German Irish cultural world, sometimes funny, sometimes poignant from his grandparents’ stories of leaving Silesia and Pomerania to his mother’s journey from Hamburg to the Dublin Horse Show, where she met his father.

This month Ciarán is joined by Ulrike Gasser, the newly appointed director of the Goethe-Institut Irland and now proud Dublin Northsider.

This episode features John Scott, choreographer and artistic director of Irish Modern Dance Theatre.

This month Ciarán is talking with the German Ambassador Deike Potzel, who, ever since her inter-railing in Europe shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, had an interest in Irish people, history and even its language. They talk about the Irish border, the ambassador's growing up in East Berlin and the rise of the far right.