The monograph provides the first comprehensive, detailed account of German-speaking refugees in Ireland 1933-1945 - where they came from, immigration policy towards them and how their lives turned out in Ireland and afterwards. Thanks to unprecedented access to thousands of files of the Irish Department of Justice (all still officially closed) as well as extensive archive research in Ireland, Germany, England, Austria as well as the US and numerous interviews it is possible for the first time to give an almost complete overview of how many people came, how they contributed to Ireland, how this fits in with the history of migration to Ireland and what can be learned from it. While Exile studies are a well-developed research area and have benefited from the work of research centres and archives in Germany, Austria, Great Britain and the USA (Frankfurt/M, Leipzig, Hamburg, Berlin, Innsbruck, Graz, Vienna, London and SUNY Albany and the Leo Baeck Institutes), Ireland was long neglected in this regard. Instead of the usual narrative of "no one was let in" or "only a handful came to Ireland" the authors identified more than 300 refugees through interviews and intensive research in Irish, German and Austrian archives. German-speaking exiles were the first main group of immigrants that came to the young Irish Free State from 1933 onwards and they had a considerable impact on academic, industrial and religious developments in Ireland.

German-speaking Exiles in Ireland 1933-1945 is a pioneering study of the impact the German-speaking exiles of the Hitler years had on Ireland as the first large group of immigrants in the country in the twentieth century. It therefore adds an important yet hitherto virtually unknown Irish dimension to international exile studies. After providing an overview of the topic and an analysis of current developments in exile studies the volume devotes two chapters to Jewish refugees and another to the considerable number of Austrian exiles, investigates the relationship between Irish government policy and public opinion, and explores the problems of identity faced by so many in exile. It then focuses on some eminent refugees - Erwin Schrödinger, Ludwig Bieler, Robert Weil, Ernst Scheyer, and Hans Sachs - before concluding with personal accounts by Ruth Braunizer (the daughter of Erwin Schrödinger, excerpts from whose diaries are published here for the first time), Monica Schefold (the daughter of John Hennig), and Eva Gross. The fourteen contributors to the volume are Wolfgang Benz, Ruth Braunizer, John Cooke, Horst Dickel, Eva Gross, Gisela Holfter, Dermot Keogh, Wolfgang Muchitsch, Siobhán O'Connor, Hermann Rasche, Monica Schefold, Birte Schulz, Raphael V. Siev, and Colin Walker.

This monograph provides the first comprehensive detailed account of German-speaking refugees in Ireland 1933–1945 – where they came from, immigration policy towards them and how their lives turned out in Ireland and afterwards. Extensive archive research in Ireland, Germany, England, Austria as well as the US and numerous interviews make it possible to give an almost complete overview.

Offering a unique account of identity formation in Ireland and Central Europe, this book explores and contextualises transfers and comparisons between Ireland and the successor states of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It reveals how Irish perceptions of borders and identities changed after the (re)birth of the small states of Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia and the creation of the Irish Free State. Adopting a transnational approach, the book documents the outward-looking attitude of Irish nationalists and provides original insights into the significance of personal encounters that transcended the borders of nation-states. Drawing on a wide range of official records, private papers, contemporary press accounts and journal articles, Imagining Ireland Abroad, 1904-1945 bridges the gap between historiographies of the East and West by opening up a new perspective on Irish national identity.

This book investigates the first time Ireland, with an autonomous legislative parliament, met with large inward migration in the modern era. In 1933, Ireland was a young state in its turbulent teens attempting to establish itself on the international stage. The people were scarred by recent memories of revolution, a War of Independence and a civil war, but they had lived through 10 years of relative peace. Two influential statesmen came to power in their respective countries: de Valera in Ireland and Hitler in Germany. Due to the latter, a large scale movement of people began. Ireland, under the leadership of de Valera, with the civil service established before him and a diverse population living there, had an unprecedented inward migratory issue to address. This book looks at the role of the civil service at home and abroad, its development and implementation of government policy and its involvement with international efforts to address the movement of German-speaking exiles fleeing the expanding National Socialist territory. It also explores the experiences of people around Ireland as they learn about the people fleeing and their responses to them. This study lays bare the foundation stone in the history of Ireland’s policy and public opinion toward inward migration, and allows us to understand the treatment of and reaction towards migration today. The impact of that fledgling refugee policy as examined here continues to echo in the current experiences of those fleeing persecution and war and those set to receive them.

This volume gives an extensive overview of current developments in the field of archival collections relating to German-speaking refugees located in Germany, Austria, the USA, Ireland and the UK. The contributions illustrate the three interlinked areas of refugee archives, Exile and Migration Studies research and related databases and other resources. The articles investigate their interrelationship as well as the future challenges facing all three areas by focussing on larger archival holdings as well as collections relating to individuals and organisations and more recently established electronic and online resources and finding aids. The volume is aimed at researchers and archival practioners alike and should be especially useful for anyone starting out in the field.

This collection offers a multi-faceted investigation of the critical issue of the creation and place of the “Other” in Ireland. The extraordinarily rapid recent economic development of Ireland has effected a profound transformation in the island’s social and cultural life. In the process, old verities and assumptions concerning the nature of Irish society and culture have been called into question, with a whole variety of new challenges coming to light. The developments of the last two decades have transformed questions of what and who constitutes the “Other” within Irish society, but in the process older societal faultlines based on gender, disability and religious difference have not disappeared and historical processes of “Othering” continue to play a critical role in influencing and moulding the social contours of the new Ireland of the twenty-first century. Drawing on a number of different disciplinary perspectives, this collection presents a number of key analyses of social and cultural practices and policies that reflect anxieties about and negotiations of these changes, examining historical and contemporary representation of fears about the porousness of national borders; the increasing racialization of the Irish state through social and juridical proscriptions, and the popular and official narrative of ‘progress’.

The sixteen essays in this volume are a tribute to Hamish Ritchie’s deep interest in exile as a literary and historical phenomenon. The first eight focus on the British and Irish context, including studies of Jürgen Kuczynski and his family, Martin Miller, Lilly Kann, Hermann Sinsheimer, Albin Stuebs, Ludwig Hopf and Paul Bondy, as well as contributions on the Association of Jewish Refugees and the exile experience as reflected in Klaus Mann’s Der Vulkan. The following four contributions widen the discussion to encompass Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Yugoslavia by focusing on the diaries of Anne Frank and Etty Hillesum, the early poetry of Bertolt Brecht, and works by Vladimir Vertlib, Aleksandar Ajzinberg, and David Albahari. The historical dimension is deepened with contributions on William Joyce, Joseph Jonas, the marginalisation of the mass emigration of the Jews within German memory, and the ‘exile’ of princesses for whom until recent times marriage often meant a life far from home.

Co-published with the Waterloo Centre for German Studies For centuries, large numbers of German-speaking people have emigrated from settlements in Europe to other countries and continents. In German Diasporic Experiences: Identity, Migration, and Loss, more than forty international contributors describe and discuss aspects of the history, language, and culture of these migrant groups, individuals, and their descendants. Part I focuses on identity, with essays exploring the connections among language, politics, and the construction of histories—national, familial, and personal—in German-speaking diasporic communities around the world. Part II deals with migration, examining such issues as German migrants in postwar Britain, German refugees and forced migration, and the immigrant as a fictional character, among others. Part III examines the idea of loss in diasporic experience with essays on nationalization, language change or loss, and the reshaping of cultural identity. Essays are revised versions of papers presented at an international conference held at the University of Waterloo in August 2006, organized by the Waterloo Centre for German Studies, and reflect the multidisciplinarity and the global perspective of this field of study.

Explores the psychology of literary translingualism in the works of two authors, finding it expressed as loss and fragmentation in one case and as opportunity and mediation in the other. The works of translingual writers-those who write in a language other than their native tongue-present a rich field for study, but literary translingualism remains underresearched and undertheorized. In this work Tamar Steinitz explores the psychological effects of translingualism in the works of two authors: the German Stefan Heym (1913-2001) and the Austrian Jakov Lind (1927-2007). Both were forced into exile by the rise of Nazism; both chose English asa language of artistic expression. Steinitz argues that translingualism, which ruptures the perceived link between language and world as the writer chooses between systems of representation, leads to a psychic split that can be expressed in the writer's work as a schizophrenic existence or as a productive doubling of perspective. Movement between languages can thus reflect both the freedom associated with geographical mobility and the emotional price it entails. Reading Lind's and Heym's works within their postwar context, Steinitz proposes these authors as representative models, respectively, of translingualism as loss and fragmentation and translingualism as opportunity and mediation. Tamar Steinitz teaches English literature at Queen Mary and Goldsmiths colleges, University of London. She has also worked as a literary translator.