Ireland, West Germany and the New Europe, 1949-73

Best friend and ally?

Mervyn O'Driscoll

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780719089831
• eBook ISBN: 9781526126061
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

A pioneering study of the seminal period from the declaration of the Republic of Ireland, and the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), in 1949 until Ireland and Britain entered the EEC in 1973. Draws on unexploited original sources from Ireland and Germany. Dramatically re-envisions the foundations of contemporary Ireland.

1

Ireland and Germany before 1949

To gain a better appreciation of Irish–West German relations after the establishment of the FRG in 1949, this chapter discusses aspects of their pre-1949 relationship. Anglo-Irish relations and Irish neutrality, in particular, had a major impact. Neutrality heavily coloured matters, as Ireland was the only member of the British Commonwealth to declare and maintain neutrality during Second World War. Allied propaganda frequently depicted Ireland as pro-German. This, in addition to the German Reich’s involvement in the Easter Rising of 1916, has attracted copious interest. However, this geopolitical focus conceals much, including Germany’s economic and cultural links with Ireland, while the pro-German label is problematic and displays fundamental misunderstandings about the Irish–German and Anglo-Irish relationships.

Moreover, this chapter exposes the long history of connections before the attainment of Irish independence in 1922. They included, for example, a common Celtic heritage, the role of the Irish Celtic Church’s conversion of the central European region from the sixth century, and German academic interest in Irish philology and history. These contacts and associations have played durable rhetorical and sentimental roles in relations ever since. The evocation and remembrance of historical parallels, past contacts and cultural similarities are a method to establish, build and reinforce formal links. They represent foundational and instrumental components of the public diplomacy of states and their efforts at relationship building. Small or relatively marginal states and nations, such as Ireland, often compensate for their weakness by pointing up such associations with more powerful states. In contemporary idiom this is an effort to exploit ‘soft power’; it is a venerable diplomatic tool. Promoters of Irish nationalism during the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, as well as representatives of the infant Irish state after 1922, relied on such devices to influence Berlin.

Pre-independence¹

One prehistoric connection applied to good effect in modern Irish–German bridge-building was that of a common Celtic heritage. This provided a basis for exchanges in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At that point the advent of modern Irish and German nationalism reinforced or interplayed with the scholarly investigation of the pre-modern origins of their respective nations. During the nineteenth century, German-speaking academics in central Europe forged the fields of philology and linguistics. They led research into the Irish language and built up close links with their Irish counterparts. This scholarship interacted with the growth of Irish nationalism and cultural regeneration.

Linked to German intellectual interest was a wider recognition of the role of the early Irish and Scottish Churches in the Christian conversion of Europe and the German region after the fall of the Roman Empire and the onset of the ‘Dark Ages’.² The formative role of the early Irish Church in the German region was consolidated by Irish Benedictine monks from the twelfth century. Many German and Austrian cities today, such as Cologne, Würzburg, Regensburg, Mainz and Salzburg, possess churches and monasteries of Irish origin. Up to one hundred Irish saints and missionaries are still remembered in German-speaking countries today.³ This evidence of the island of Ireland’s contribution to Christendom heightened modern Germans’ receptiveness to the idea that Ireland formed part of European civilisation.

Academic cross-pollination, therefore, matured, and it was assisted by pan-Celticism and Christianity. It enhanced cultural relations from the end of the eighteenth century. German scholarship empowered Irish identity with an intellectual rationale by developing Celtic studies as an academic subject. The first German department in Ireland or Britain was established in Trinity College Dublin in 1776; it became a focus for cultural and intellectual relations.⁴ Several German universities founded Celtic studies programmes and participated in the Irish cultural renaissance at the end of the nineteenth century.⁵ The professor of Celtic philology at Berlin University, Heinrich Zimmer (1851–1910), played a prominent role in promoting interest in the Irish language. In 1903 Douglas Hyde, the founder of the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge) and an evangelist of de-Anglicisation, persuaded Kuno Meyer (1858–1919) – a German scholar and staunch supporter of the Irish language – to become the first director of the School of Irish Learning in Dublin. Later Meyer acceded to Zimmer’s chair of Celtic in Berlin in 1911 and was a firm supporter of Irish nationalism.⁶ ‘Celtomania’ held sway in European, and especially in German philological circles, during the latter half of the nineteenth century when it was realised that most European languages were traceable to one mother tongue, Indo-European. Academic speculation centred on the possibility that Irish was an elder European language more closely associated with the Indo-European root tongue than modern Slavic and Romance languages. Thus the Irish language, Celtic heritage and Christian Ireland’s function in re-enlightening Europe during the Dark Ages fascinated Germans and other Europeans. Celtic studies scholars were among the first emissaries sent by the Irish independence movement to build links with Germany after the outbreak of the Anglo-Irish War in 1919. Ann (‘Nancy’) Wyse Power, a product of Kuno Meyer’s School of Irish Learning and a graduate of Celtic studies from University College Dublin (UCD), had earlier commenced a doctorate in Celtic studies in Bonn. She was tasked with setting up an abortive Irish republican publicity and diplomatic bureau in Berlin during 1921.⁷ The first Irish minister plenipotentiary to Germany after 1929 was an eminent Celtic studies scholar, Professor Daniel A. Binchy.⁸

Official Germany displayed limited interest in Ireland until the polarisation of the major European powers into two opposing and rival blocs before First World War. It was largely Anglophile in its cultural tastes. This partially reflected Lutheran Germans elementary affinity with English Protestantism as well as an admiration of Britain’s global empire. Some exiled Society of United Irishmen had sought refuge in Hamburg, having inspired the failed French military intervention in Ireland in 1796. Following a United Irishmen rebellion in 1798, more exiles followed. Hamburg offered a neutral base close to revolutionary France and easy shipping access to Ireland.⁹ Later, informed Catholic opinion in Germany followed Daniel O’Connell’s campaign for emancipation in the early nineteenth century with interest. The development of the Irish nationalist movement after the Famine was also noted.

Following the unification of Germany (1870–71) official interest in Ireland was largely absent. Imperial Germany viewed Britain as a country to be emulated. It was only when Berlin’s great power ambitions stimulated Anglo-German antagonism at the end of the century that the prospects for Imperial Germany’s interaction with Ireland grew. The division of Europe into two rival blocs in the early twentieth century heralded the possibility that Ireland would be exploited as Britain’s strategic Achilles heel in any conflict. The service of Major John MacBride’s Irish Transvaal Brigade (colloquially known as ‘MacBride’s brigade’) with the Boers and Imperial Germany during the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902) foreshadowed future links. It presaged Sir Roger Casement’s efforts in Germany during First World War to enlist German imperial support for the Irish revolutionary cause. In general, Imperial Germany lacked a detailed understanding of the forces at work in Irish society after its decades of neglect of Britain’s ‘Ireland’s Question’. Its resources were focused on breaking the military deadlock on the continent. Since sufficient German support failed to materialise, Casement returned to Ireland in a German submarine to call off the 1916 Easter Rising. Captured, he was tried, publicly humiliated and executed for treason against Britain. He metamorphosed into an iconic republican martyr.¹⁰ German Hibernophiles and Irish expatriates founded a German–Irish Society (Deutsche-Irische Gesellschaft) in Berlin after the failed ‘Rising’. Kuno Meyer, now in Berlin, was its first president. A later secretary of the society aptly calculated that the Germans retained an interest in Ireland to ‘a certain extent … and they were even more interested because of being at war with the British’.¹¹

Interwar

Imperial Germany’s defeat in First World War and its replacement by an unstable democracy, the Weimar Republic, did not augur well for the development of relations during and after the Irish War of Independence (or the Anglo-Irish War, 1919–21). Irish Republican Army (IRA) agents in conjunction with private German individuals, including demobilised soldiers, ran a gun-running operation out of Hamburg to supply the Irish insurgency. Weimar struggled for legitimacy and leniency in the face of the victors’, notably France’s, retributive impulses. Since British statesmen, in general, laboured to temper French revanchism, the sustenance of cordial German-British relations was a priority for Berlin. In spite of many German expressions of private support for the Irish national cause, Weimar refused to extend formal recognition to the Irish republican mission that was sent to Berlin in 1921. Although sections of the German press and many individuals interpreted the Anglo-Irish Truce (July 1921) and the Anglo-Irish Treaty as a vindication of the Irish independence movement, no formal recognition of the Irish mission in Berlin was likely. The early Weimar Republic experienced acute political and economic turmoil. Its governments did not want to upset the British Government, which was interpreted as adopting a more lenient position towards Germany than France. The Irish representatives eventually withdrew from Berlin in 1923. The fragile Weimar Republic in the mid-1920s was far too preoccupied with its own survival to give much consideration to Irish affairs. In any case, many foreign governments, including Germany, had difficulty in interpreting the implications of Ireland’s dominion status until Commonwealth negotiations clarified matters gradually in the decade following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty (6 December 1921). The bloodshed and the disorder of the Irish Civil War (1922–23) hindered Ireland’s normalisation as a member of the family of nations. Only in the late 1920s did the Irish Free State government meld the divided state sufficiently to attend to external links beyond Britain and the United States. Naturally, Germany was among the first cohort of continental states with which Ireland wished to establish external relations.

Formal relations finally commenced during the winter of 1929–30, when legations were established in Dublin and Berlin. Unfortunately, this occurred at an inopportune juncture. The Wall Street Crash of October 1929 brought the period of global and German post-war recovery (‘the Golden Era’ from 1924) to an end. The Great Depression destabilised the fragile Weimar Republic; the fragmented democratic parties withered in the face of the political radicalism and populism of the Nazi and the communist parties. During this unsettled post-1929 period, Weimar sustained a circumspect attitude towards the Irish representatives. The AA remained mindful of not offending British sensitivities or interfering in the intricate Anglo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Ireland and Germany before 1949
• 2 Honeymoon
• 3 Emerging dissonance
• 4 Trade and agriculture in the 1950s
• 5 Irish industrialisation and the German ‘economic miracle’
• 6 Germany, Lemass and foreign policy adaptation
• 7 Germany and Ireland’s application to the EEC, 1961–63
• 8 The long road into Europe
• 9 Land wars, Nazis and the Troubles
• Epilogue: Ireland, German reunification and remaking Europe
• Select bibliography
• Index