Nick Maxwell The first Limerick Conference in Irish-German Studies gets underway atthe start of September in the University. It is exactly forty yearssince Nobel Literature Prize-winner Heinrich Böll’s Irisches Tagebuchwas first published. Böll, who died in 1985, would have been eightythis year and to mark both occasions the conference puts Böll centrestage. The programme is interdisciplinary in … Read more
The National University of Ireland is undergoing a transformation at the moment, as its constituent Colleges become Universities in their own right. But the NUI will continue to play an important part in educational life, not least in fostering and encouraging research. A good example of this role is the NUI Irish Historical Research Prize. … Read more
Memories of the Great Famine one hundred years previously was one reason why Irish humanitarian aid for Germany immediately after World War II was given in astonishing amounts and with great speed. At the same time, these contributions were the cause of considerable controversy, since the suspicion arose that in some cases Irish animosity for … Read more
Being up for the Germans in the war had stirring consolations and triumphalisms until the debacle at Stalingrad. Being up for the British at the same time meant a steady diet of humiliation from Dunkirk to Singapore, via Tobruck. The school yards were divided. Taunts of uncovered German atrocities, experiments, concentration camps, persecution and cruelties … Read more
A terse paragraph in the Irish national dailies on 3 May 1945 started the avalanche of international protest. Under the heading ‘People and Places’, the Fianna Fáil-backed Irish Press reported laconically that the Taoiseach and Minister for External Affairs, Éamon de Valera, accompanied by the Secretary of External Affairs, Joseph Walshe, ‘called on Dr Hempel, … Read more