Adolf Mahr

Adolf Maria Mahr (born May 7, 1887 in Trento , then Austria ; † May 27, 1951 in Bonn ) was an Austrian archaeologist . In the 1930s he was director of the National Museum of Ireland .

Life path

His father and two grandfathers were already military musicians . Mahr decided early on to break out of the family tradition. The family came from Bohemia . He spent his childhood with the frequently changing positions of his father in Bregenz , Trient , Linz and Krakow . In 1906 he began his service in Salzburg as a one-year volunteer . During his studies at the University of Vienna , which he completed with a doctorate as Dr. phil. graduated, he became a member of the Corps Symposion Vienna. During the First World War he was not drafted because his right arm was so injured on the drum floor that he could not stretch it for his entire life, not even in the way that would have been necessary for the Hitler salute.

Mahr had turned from Catholicism to atheism during his studies , but then became Protestant like his wife after his wedding in 1921 . After completing his studies, he first carried out research on the Hallstatt culture as an archaeologist . Mahr was an archaeologist and department head at the Natural History Museum Vienna . The linguistically gifted scientist (Dutch, Serbian, Italian, Spanish, French, plus Latin and Ancient Greek, but not English) became head of the Department of Irish Antiquity at the Irish National Museum at the end of September 1927 . Until the end of 1927 it was called the National Museum of Science and Art .

Ireland

For the move, he had to go into debt with his father-in-law. In Ireland he initially received an annual salary of £ 740, as director from 1934 £ 840 + 20 for each additional year of service. His staff described him as collegial and personally committed.

During Oskar Kokoschka's visit in June and July 1928, it was Mahr's job to look after him on behalf of the German community. The family moved to their first apartment in Dublin at 37 Waterloo Place (today: Upper Leeson St.). At home was v. a. Spoke German.

For the first time, the archaeological holdings of various institutions were cataloged (on index cards) under his aegis. Although there were important archaeologists in Ireland with George Coffey , George Petrie and Sir William Wilde as early as the 19th century, Mahr is considered by many to be the "father of Irish archeology" due to his systematization.

In the drafting of the Monument Protection Act ( National Monuments Act , he played a leading role in 1930). The Irish government commissioned a book on Christian Art in Ancient Ireland for the 31st World Eucharistic Congress , held in Dublin in June 1932 .

On June 16, 1934, Mahr was appointed director of the house. With excellent technical qualifications, he built up his own Irish archeology. In this capacity, he took part in the coronation of George VI in May 1937, representing Irish science . part.

Mahr joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party on April 1, 1933 . Like many of the so-called "April Nazis", he hoped for professional advantages and tried to make a name for himself by being fanatical - as a "110% iger". When a cell of the NSDAP foreign organization in Ireland (AO) was founded in Dublin in 1934 , he was first chairman and very active in this function. He also interfered in the diplomatic work of the legation. When the envoy Georg von Dehn-Schmidt was transferred to Bucharest and kissed the ring of the papal nuncio on his farewell visit, Mahr made sure that an inflammatory article was published in the striker . Since this was considered unworthy of a representative of the “Third Reich” , Dehn-Schmidt was put into temporary retirement on the orders of the Führer.

For the referendum on the occasion of the annexation of Austria , Mahr organized a boat trip for local Germans in 1938, so that a vote could be cast in international waters. On the German side he received a professorship e. H. In December 1938 he informed the Foreign Office that he wanted to give up the local group leadership in order to avoid legal problems as an Irish civil servant. In his Nazi activities, which also took place in public at meetings in the Red Bank restaurant , he did not let up. Heinz Mecking became his successor as chairman of the local group . It has been erroneously assumed that he was active in the intelligence service for Germany.

In 1937 he was elected President of the British Prehistoric Society . In 1938/39 Mahr Robert Munro was lecturer in anthropology and prehistoric archeology. In June of that year, Éamon de Valera personally gave him £ 400 to complete an excavation at Drimnagh .

Germany

Mahr received an invitation to take part in the 1939 Party Rally. He left Ireland with his family on July 19, also to take part in the 6th international archaeological congress in Berlin. He was surprised in Germany by the British declaration of war on September 3rd, so that a return to Dublin was not possible. At first he lived in Bad Ischl . In the summer of 1940 he went on a lecture tour through Hungary and Switzerland .

Because of his knowledge of Ireland, Mahr managed to get employed at the Foreign Office for Foreign Broadcasting. He was responsible for the weekly broadcasts in Irish since the beginning of the war and was the chief executive of William Joyce . His proposal to record English-language broadcasts aimed at the Irish was taken up in May 1941. In the winter semester of 1942/43 he had a part-time teaching position at the University of Bonn . The family's Berlin apartment was bombed out in the summer of 1943. In the spring of 1943, Mahr's office was relocated to Krummhübel in Silesia. In this place he was at the "Anti-Jewish Foreign Action" of the AA, a conference on 3rd / 4th. April 1944, involved as a speaker. The protocol reports: Mahr deals in his presentation with the anti-Jewish campaign abroad on the radio. He demands the enforcement of German radio broadcasts abroad with anti-Jewish educational material and the influencing of the radio of the countries close to us or allied in a similar sense while preserving the sovereignty of the countries concerned. Good material should be provided in German radio.

By 1944 he rose to head Ru-9 , responsible for political broadcasts and anti-Semitic propaganda in English-speaking countries. He was able to prevent the Foreign Office (Ribbentrop) from being transferred to the Propaganda Ministry (Goebbels).

In January 1946, Mahr was arrested and taken to the Fallingbostel camp , where the usual strict interrogation methods ( 3rd degree ) were subjected. At that time, when questions related to the ill-treatment of prisoners were being discussed in the House of Commons , the British military administration established the practice of releasing sick prisoners home. Mahr was also discharged sick on April 10th.

post war period

Immediately after the end of the war, Mahr applied to be able to return to his post in Ireland. His return to Ireland was effectively prevented by a question from pro-British opposition politician John Dillon in the Dáil Éireann . It was decided, also on the advice of the secret service chief Dan Bryan , to put the matter on the back burner and to retire Mahr after reaching the first age limit (60). The Irish Cabinet did not formally reach a decision at the September 21, 1945 and July 9, 1946 meetings. On November 5, 1948, it was decided to retire Mahr with an appropriate pension. He then received a severance payment of £ 382 and an annual pension of £ 151 which was not paid on to his widow.

The events of the war did not purify Mahr regarding his racist convictions. In the summer of 1946 he expressed concerns about the marriage of his daughter Hilde, since the Frankfurt bridegroom had "one eighth of Jewish blood" (p. 183), but then agreed to the marriage. In his denazification process , he was first classified in class II ("charged"), later downgraded to III. At the Bonn museum he was given the opportunity to work free of charge, and he also slept behind the shelves in his study. In early 1951 he was proposed as the future head of an institute for the history of mining. In February he suffered an undetected minor heart attack, which was followed by a severe one in May, from which he died at the age of 64. He is buried in the Poppelsdorf cemetery .

family

Mahr's parents were Gustav Johann Mahr (born November 23, 1858 in Brandýs nad Labem-Stará Boleslav , † September 1, 1930 in Hargelsberg ), kk military bandmaster and composer (in turn son of the military bandmaster Anton Franz Mahr), and Maria Antonia, née. Schroll (born March 4, 1866 in Prague , † February 15, 1945 in Linz )

During the First World War, Mahr had a fiancée who drowned herself in the Danube in 1918. His wife Maria van Bemmelen was Dutch (* April 18, 1901 in The Hague; † October 30, 1975 in Hailer-Gelnhausen ), daughter of the Groningen biology professor Johan Frans van Bemmelen (* December 26, 1859 in Groningen; † August 6, 1956 in Leiden) and his wife Adriana Jacoba Paulus (born June 27, 1873 in The Hague, † March 19, 1945 in Leiden); Granddaughter of the chemist Jacob Maarten van Bemmelen . Maria's widowed younger sister, Jozien, was the personal secretary of Arthur Seyß-Inquart , whom she knew from Vienna , during World War II . Her brother Jaap , was a judge and professor of criminal law at Leiden and was active against the German occupiers.

Mahr's children

Gustav (born August 3, 1922) also began to turn to archeology after being captured by the Americans in 1951

Hildegard (born July 24, 1926, Klagenfurt), medical-technical assistant

Ingrid Erica Roswitha (born July 26, 1929, Dublin; † March 2015, Hailer)

Ulrike Brigitta Wilhelmina, called Brigitte (English Brigit) (born January 3, 1933, Dublin)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 137 , 44
2. ↑ picture approx. 1936, Dublin Nazi No. 1 ... (2007), after p. 128
3. ↑ Dublin Nazi No. 1 ... (2007), p. 45
4. ↑ ^{a b} Gerry Mullins (2007), chap. 1 "Family Life"
5. ↑ ^{a b c} File of the Irish Secret Service: G2 / 0130 in the Irish Military Archives, Dublin. quoted in: Dermot Keogh: Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland. Cork 1998, ISBN 1-85918-149-X , pp. 105ff., 149ff.
6. ↑ Nature . Volume 141, April 2, 1938, pp. 588-589
7. ↑ Protocol: Web link in Art. Krummhübel
8. ^ Hubert Sturm: swastika and shamrock. Frankfurt 1984, Volume I, pp. 248ff., A57-A75
9. ↑ Contemporary documented by the Bishop of Chichester, George Bell
10. ↑ Gerry Mullins: Extract from Dublin Nazi No.1 - The Life of Adolf Mahr. (PDF) March 2007, archived from the original on June 12, 2009 ; accessed on March 18, 2014 (English). 
11. ↑ Family tree in: Dublin Nazi No. 1 ... (2007), p. 8

literature

• Eckart Conze , Norbert Frei , Peter Hayes and Moshe Zimmermann : The Office and the Past . German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic , Karl Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-89667-430-2 , pp. 197f., 194 (role at the conference in Krummhübel).
• Maria Keipert (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 3: Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger: L – R. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2008, ISBN 978-3-506-71842-6 .
• Adolf Mahr. In: Archeology Ireland . 7, 1993, ISSN  0790-892X , pp. 29-30.
• Charles Mount: Adolf Mahr's excavations of an early bronze age cemetery at Keenoge, County Meath. In: Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. section C, 97, 1997, ISSN  0035-8991 , pp. 1-68.
• Gerry Mullins, Seán O'Keeffe (Eds.): Dublin Nazi No. 1. The Life of Adolf Mahr. Liberties, Dublin 2007, ISBN 978-1-905483-19-8 .
• David O'Donoghue: Hitler's Irish Voices. The story of German radio's wartime Irish service. Beyond The Pale, Belfast 1998, ISBN 1-900960-04-4 .
• David O'Donoghue: State within a state: the Nazis in neutral Ireland , Dublin Historical Record, 2007
• Mervyn O'Driscoll: Ireland, Germany and the Nazis. Politics and Diplomacy, 1919-1939. Four Courts Press, Dublin 2004, ISBN 1-85182-480-4 , pp. 251-253: “Adolf Mahr” ( Cork Studies in Irish History 3).

Web links

• Literature by and about Adolf Mahr in the catalog of the German National Library