German Traces in Ireland
The Goethe Institut’s “German Traces” app series now has a new edition about the Emerald Isle.
German and Irish people can now learn more about each other with a free app launched by the Goethe Institut. More than 30 organisations and personalities in Ireland and Germany have collaborated in the new digital offering: German Traces in Ireland. A reading by the German writer Heinrich Böll from his Irish Journal – a semi-documentary journey account of 1957 – can be experienced via iPhone or iPad as well as historical photographs, tape recordings and film material about German-Irish history. The contents of the app can also be accessed via the website of the Goethe Institut in Ireland. The app and the website are being expanded and updated. The famous team of authors, Ralf Sotschek and Fintan O´Toole, has written the texts that tell us a great deal about the connections between the two countries. For instance, German and Irish engineers together built the Ardnacrusha hydroelectric power station in County Clare in the 1920s, and it is still producing electricity today. The audio-visual material also tells stories from the life of the singer and actress Agnes Bernelle, who was born in Germany and later on lived in exile in Ireland, as well as the German-Irish sculptress Imogen Stuart. Friedrich Engels is equally part of the presentation: his Marxist ideology was strongly influenced by the mutual experiences with his lifelong partner, Mary Burns, an Irish working-class woman.
European connection
“The lives of German and Irish people have become interwoven over many centuries,” says the Irish journalist Fintan O’Toole. “Particularly in times when the European idea is coming under pressure, it’s a good thing to remember that our European connections are deeply rooted.” He hopes that the app in English and German will open up new paths to a greater voyage of discovery inspired by mutual curiosity.
The Goethe Institut also offers similar apps with German Traces in Israel, Brazil, Stockholm and Bratislava.
https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/deutsche-spuren/id587799106?mt=8