Judith Hermann about her experience at Germany@Home

In winter 2013 I had the pleasure of spending two weeks in the Heinrich Böll Cottage on Achill Island. Among the books in what once was Böll’s writing room, I discovered Irish writer Claire Keegan’s short stories. Two years later, in spring 2015, I meet Claire Keegan for the first time – at one of the Goethe-Institut’s Germany@Home events, a series of readings in private spaces, informal Irish or German or Irish–German settings, readings at home.

On this particular evening, the host is Mechtild Manus, and Claire Keegan has travelled up to Dublin from the Wicklow Mountains. She arrives shortly before the reading is due to begin, greets each of the assembled guests with grave formality and a firm handshake, and for a moment is visibly taken aback when she realises that the reading will indeed take place at the dining table, in the middle of the still bright living room with its views of Hanover Quay, Google Land, the Aviva Stadium, the evening cityscape, later on the nightscape. To take in this view, Claire has a cigarette and a glass of wine on the balcony, then comes back in. The moderator, Eileen Battersby, has arrived, all out of breath, with a framed photograph of her horse, presumably taken off the wall on the spur of the moment before she dashed out of her house. She shows it to Claire, whispering, holding it half under the table. The last guests arrive and find seats on sofas or low window sills; they are Irish, German, young and old; Mechtild Manus welcomes everyone; her delight in this gathering is plain to see.
 
[In the living room: Judith Hermann and Claire Keegan at Germany@Home 4] We read one after the other, strange coincidences, texts about unwelcome intruders, about occupation, about men and women, writing and reading. It is lovely to hear the story I read in German translation during my solitary and wintry time in Achill, this time read aloud by Claire Keegan in the English original, in a deep, warm voice, amused and delighted at the proximity of the audience, at the familiarity of this proximity. The discussion, moderated by Eileen Battersby, touches on love of the short story, on Döblin, Kleist, Hölderlin and Kästner; then, believe it or not, we talk about horses, horse breeding, horse boxes, the transport of horses in Ireland in general, then about loneliness, Achill ghosts, writing rooms, writing conditions, the joys and struggles of writing; and we could have talked until late if the reading, despite being in Mechtild’s living room, hadn’t been limited to two hours. Afterwards we have Bavarian pretzels and good, cold beer. The glittering city is laid out below the panorama windows; a round moon is suspended over the bay. Somebody says German allows for more complex thinking; someone else says English gets to the crux of the matter; the trick is to find the language in between. Claire Keegan says she’ll come to Berlin, sometime, for sure. Next morning, her empty wine glass is still there beside the chair on the balcony and the day is sunny, cold and clear. A chair, a glass, water, March light – I capture this Dublin still life in a photo and take it home with me.