heinrich böll

Dieses Mal lassen wir den Dreiklang von Irland, Literatur und Whiskey ertönen. Dafür lesen wir Flann O’Briens „Aus Dalkeys Archiven“ und trinken einen im Stout Fass gereiften Blended Whiskey von Teeling. So kommen wir ins Erzählen, zumal uns immer wieder James Joyce und Heinrich Böll dazwischenfunken. 

Der Podcast über Literatur & Alkohol. Unabhängig und freudentrunken mit Matthias und Michael. Bilder und mehr auf Insta: @gargantuapod

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.