The Sound Archive in the National Folklore Collection has recently digitised the Hans Hartmann collection of audio tapes, which were stored in UCD’s Special Collections. The collection comprises 39 reel-to-reel tapes, and each tape contains 3 hours of material collected by Hartmann. These recordings were made in the 1960s in Galway, Kerry and Donegal.
Reel-to-reel tapes from the Hans Hartmann Collection
Hans Hartmann
Hans Hartmann was born on the 18th of November 1909, in Rüstringen near Oldenburg in the North of Germany. He was educated at the Mareingymnasium in Jever, and went on to study linguistics in Marburg in 1928 and in Berlin from 1930. It was around this time that he was pressured into joining the Nazi Party. Hartmann states:
‘The reason was that my studies had been paid for by the Studienstifung (Student Scholarship Foundation) whose members were told that since the Reich had done so much to promote their studies they would show some gratitude and that the least they could, and should do, was to enter the party. That I did in order to be left undisturbed further on.’
(Hitler’s Irish Voices)
Hartmann received a grant from the Education Department in Germany to come to Ireland in April 1937, to study folklore and the Irish language. He arrived in Cobh on the 3rd of April and made his way to Dublin to work at the National Museum. He initially worked under Adolf Mahr in the National Museum of Ireland, and then moved to the Irish Folklore Commission, where he worked under Séamus Ó Duilearga with Máire MacNéill and Seán Ó Súilleabháin.
UCD Special Collections, IDA B28 2/11
In Dublin, Hartmann stayed in a flat at Dartmouth Square, and was known to attend many social functions. He would meet his fellow Germans at the Red Bank restaurant in d’Olier Street, where he had a preference for pints of Guinness, ignoring the German beer that had been specially imported by the restaurant’s owners. While in Donegal, Hartmann stayed in the Seaview Hotel in Bunbeg and toured the county with Seán Ó hEochaidh.
Officials of the Commission and Department of Irish Folklore: (NFC Ref. no. M011.06.00360)
L to R: Seán Mac Giollarnáth, Séamus Ó Duilearga, An tAth. Eric Mac Fhinn, Adolph Mahr, Osborn Bergin, Hans Hartmann, Peadar Mac Fhionnlaoich, Liam Price, Rev. John G. O’Neill, Leon Ó Broin, Éamonn Ó Donnchadha, Louis Maguidhir, Åke Campbell, Michael Heaney 1937.
Hartmann also began researching material about Irish death customs, with the plan of eventually writing a doctoral thesis on the subject under the supervision of the German scholar Ludwig Mühlhausen. Hartmann became close with O’Súilleabháin and the two drew up the December 1938 questionnaire together. This questionnaire received 26 lengthy replies, and the bound material filled seven full volumes. Less than a year after the IFC head office received the last death questionnaire, Britain and France declared war on Germany, and Hartmann returned to Germany.
Department of Irish Folklore Questionnaire – Death Customs NFC 548: 293
Hans Hartmann (standing, left) interviewing POW Larry Slattery from Thurles in a Berlin hospital. Slattery’s RAF plane was shot down while dropping leaflets over Germany on 4 September 1939. (Irish Military Archives)
The German scholar Ludwig Mühlhausen had been broadcasting in Irish on the station Irland-Redaktion in Germany since December 1939. In 1940 he asked his student Hartmann to broadcast a talk in Irish every week, and the station remained on air until May 1945. Each week they would broadcast a mixture of jigs, reels and Nazi propaganda to an Irish audience. Their aim was to influence Irish nationalists, with an anti-English message, including stories of British Army brutality before Ireland had gained its independence. Hartmann also added some English-language staff to his programme, including the writer Francis Stuart.
Unlike Mühlhausen, Hartmann was not regarded as a Nazi by his friends in Ireland. Seán Ó Súilleabháin gave Hartmann financial assistance, and Hartmann visited Ireland to thank him. On the other hand, German linguist and former student of Hartmann, Dr. Arndt Wigger argues that Hartmann became a member of the Nazi Party three days before the election in 1933. The Nazi government had not been formed at the time, meaning that Hartman may have agreed with the political principles of the Nazis, and hidden his true beliefs from those around him in Ireland.
By 1942, Hartmann was finishing his thesis at the University of Berlin, and had got a position lecturing there. In 1948, Hartmann was employed as a lecturer in Celtic Linguistics at the University of Göttingen, and in 1953 he was appointed professor of Comparative Linguistics at the University of Hamburg. In the 1960s, Hartmann collected Irish language material in Galway, Kerry and Donegal. This material is now held in Special Collections, James Joyce Library, UCD.
Otari reel-to-reel tape machine used for playback of Hartmann’s tapes in the National Folklore Collection
Tomás Ó Conaire; Seán Ó Meá; Tomás Ó Mainín:
Máire Ní Chonchubhair; Donncha Ó Conchubhair; Séamas Ó Dálaigh:
Hans Hartmann at his home in Cologne, 1990 © David A. O’Donoghue
This post was written by Simon O’Leary, Oifigeach Sinsearach Teicniúil | Senior Technical Officer, Cnuasach Bhéaloideas Éireann | National Folklore Collection
Further reading:
NFC Main Manuscript Collection 548 – 555
Nachruf auf Hans Hartmann (1909–2000) https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/ZCPH.2003.259/html?srsltid=AfmBOooSxVKXNiRF4QeWp3lz7GmQjtpGpyJyscxhWbyEtH7DrTfvEERR
HARTMANN, Hans
https://www.ainm.ie/Bio.aspx?ID=1545&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1
The role of German-speaking scholars in the study of Modern Irish
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23024211?seq=1
Hitler’s Irish Voices. The story of German radio’s propaganda service, 1939 – 1945.
Glaoch ón Triú Reich
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2157174/plotsummary/?ref_=tt_ov_pl
Cartlann na gCanúintí, Roinn na Nua Ghaeilge, UCD
https://www.ucd.ie/specialcollections/t4media/cartlann_2003.pdf
Very interesting, and the sound quality is excellent – well done Simon