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14th Limerick Conference in Irish-German Studies
Context of ‘Kristallnacht’: Ireland and the German-speaking refugees 1933-45 - A colloquium on German-speaking exiles, Irish helpers and the national and international context 75 years ago.
Centre for Irish-German Studies, University of Limerick
7/8 November 2013, Plassey House, UL
PROGRAMME
Thursday, 7. November 2013
4.00 pm Welcome Addresses
Prof Don Barry, President University of Limerick
H.E. Thomas Nader, Austrian Ambassador to Ireland
Harald Seibel, First Secretary, German Embassy Dublin
4.30-5.45pm Personal reflections I
Stephen Weil (London)
Klaus Unger (Dublin)
Paul Dubsky (Wexford/Dublin)
6.00-7.15pm Personal reflections II
Hans Kohlseisen (Wien/skype)
Herbert Karrach (King’s Lynn, England, Nepal / video)
Prof Eoin Bourke (Galway/Berlin) – George Clare
7.30pm Cultural legacy (film/music programme)
Film – Blind Eye (2007)
Followed by a discussion with Mary Rose Doorly (director) and Hugo Hamilton (author)
Friday 8. November 2013
9.00-10.30am Contexts in Ireland, Great Britain and the Continent
Prof Tony McElligott (UL) – Context ‘Kristallnacht’
Prof Ian Wallace (Bath) – Refugees in Great Britain – a comparison
Dr David O’Donoghue (Dublin) – Nazis in Ireland
11.00-12.00 Insights into the helpers’ side I
Philip Jacob (Dublin) – Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)
Yanky Fachler (Dublin) – The Jewish Community
12.15-13.15 Insights into the helpers’ side II
Glynn Douglas (Dublin) – Nora Douglas and the Belfast Committee for Refugees
Michael Kennedy (Peterborough) - A second generation’s perspective
1.15-2.30 pm lunch break
2.30-4.15pm Research on German-speaking refugees in Ireland
Martti Steinke (Belfast/Limerick) – Refugees in Northern Ireland
Birte Schulz (Dublin) – Questions of Identity
Dr Siobhan O’Connor (UL) – Policy and public responses towards the exiles
Dr Gisela Holfter (UL) –Schrödinger was not the only one - Academics in Irish exile
For registration please email: [log in to unmask]
Conference fee: €20 for 7 & 8 November 2013 if you register by 1 November (€30 after that)
Day rates: €10 for 7 November 2013; €15 for 8 November if you register by 1 November (15€ and €20)
The conference, organised by the Centre for Irish-German Studies, provides an Irish context to the events of ‘Kristallnacht’ and focuses specifically on the fate of German-speaking refugees who came to Ireland and the people who helped them.
75 years ago, on 9th November 1938, thousands of synagogues were burned, tens of thousands of mainly Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps for no other reason than their religious background. They were released only after weeks and months, once they could produce proof of emigration opportunities.
For some few of the men and their family members, Ireland became a place of refuge. They included for example Dr Ernst Scheyer, eminent lawyer in the Silesian town of Liegnitz, and his wife Marie. Their son Heinz studied medicine at Trinity College. Later they were joined by their daughter Renate. Years later, Renate married Robert Weil, who had escaped from Berlin as a teenage refugee to Ireland and who found shelter in Newtown School in Waterford. They were the first couple to marry in the newly founded Progressive Jewish community. Others came to Ireland through the auspices of the Irish Co-Ordinating Committee for Refugees, some as academics to build up the newly founded Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies, others as entrepreneurs who provided employment in towns across Ireland.
With this colloquium we want to focus on the contexts from which and into which the refugees came and on current research as well as personal reflections from family members of former refugees. It is also meant as a tribute to the individuals and groups who reached out and helped. Again, it is not only academic work but also the individual experiences that will be presented by speakers who grew up in families that took in refugees. Following a showing of the short film Blind Eye, the legacy of the refugee experience will be discussed with Irish writer Hugo Hamilton, who wrote the script, and with producer Mary Rose Doorly.
The research project on the German-speaking refugees 1933-1945 has been running at the Centre for Irish-German Studies for more than ten years and has been supported by grants from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Austrian Academy of Science, DAAD, Royal Irish Academy and the University of Limerick. A first conference on the topic was held in Limerick in 2004. Contributors included academics as well as former refugees such as Eva Gross, Monica Schefold (John Hennig’s daughter) and Ruth Braunizer (Erwin Schrödinger’s daughter) who came to Ireland as children. All fifteen papers were published in German-speaking Exiles in Ireland 1933-1945, Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi 2006 (edited by Gisela Holfter).
The conference is supported by the German and Austrian Embassies, Dr Beate Schuler, and by the Teaching Fund and Research Office of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and the School of LLCC.
Conference Administrators:
Robyn Byrt and Mary McDermot [log in to unmask]
Organiser: Dr Gisela Holfter
Dr Gisela Holfter
Senior Lecturer in German &
Joint Director, Centre for Irish-German Studies
Course Director, MA in Irish-German Studies
School of Languages, Literature, Culture and Communication
University of Limerick
Limerick, Ireland
+353 61 202395
http://www3.ul.ie/llcc/Irish-German/