Hiberno Goethe

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.