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.