ROLF STEHLE | FORMER DIRECTOR GOETHE-INSTITUT IRLAND 2006-2012

My first contact with the Goethe-Institut in Dublin was in 1984, when I had taken up teaching German language and literature as a DAAD-Lektor at the University of Limerick, then still The National Institute for Higher Education. A year later the NIHE organized its first Plassey Arts Days, we cooperated with the Goethe-Institut and got some German cultural programs through them. When I left Limerick in 1987 and started as a trainee at the Goethe-Institut headquarters in Munich I already knew that one day I would want to come back and work at the institute in Dublin.
 
Almost 20 years later I was transferred to Dublin as the new institute director. On our way from Beirut in Lebanon my family and I got caught in the Hezbollah-Israel War of 2006. When we finally arrived in Dublin our household goods and furniture were still stuck in Beirut, so we temporarily got some cutlery, chairs and an old sofa from the institute to be able to move into our empty house in Dublin. The sofa was exactly the one on which then director Dr. Dietrich Kreplin had offered me a farewell drink from his bar on my way to Munich 20 years ago. Now there was no bar left there.
 
Just as our complex world is forever changing, the Goethe-Institut has to constantly reposition itself and develop its own perspectives if it aims to tackle the challenges posed by this globalized world. During the first decade of this century there were especially three fields in which we wanted to intensify our work in Ireland: to organize conferences, round tables and film series on migration and cultural diversity, to intensify the cooperation among the European cultural institutes and to create sustainable artist-in-residence programs in the visual arts and for writers. I am, therefore, particularly happy about the ongoing cooperation with the Heinrich Böll Association and the continuing writers’ residencies in the Heinrich Böll Cottage in Dugort that were started with the writers Ulrich Peltzer, Jan Böttcher, Michael Kleeberg and Kathrin Schmidt. 
 
European cultural cooperation at institutional level generally had only started relatively late. Hence, we substantially enlarged the number of members in our Ireland cluster of European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC). The aim was to enhance European integration and to make cultural work more transnational and less national. To mark 50 years Goethe-Institut Irland in 2011 we together with the Centre for Irish-German Studies at the University of Limerick co-organized a conference on German-Irish cultural relations, cultural policy and practice in Europe. Among Irish and German experts, we could welcome the Chairwoman of the Committee on Culture and Education of the European Parliament, the EUNIC president, who at the time was Romanian, and the Director of the European Cultural Foundation from Amsterdam. The conference led to a book publication, co-edited with Professor Joachim Fischer entitled German-Irish Cultural Relations in a European Perspective (WV Trier 2012).
 
At the beginning of the 21st century both Ireland and Germany had become immigration countries, so multiculturalism, migration and integration issues had become politically and socially relevant. For years the institute cooperated with universities, cultural partners and migrant rights organisations to guarantee a multi-faceted perspective and a diverse and interested audience. One of our main partners then was the Forum on Migration and Communications (FOMACS). In 2012 the Goethe-Institut was honoured with the Metro Éireann Media and Multicultural Award (MAMA) receiving the multinational organisation prize for promoting discussion on the challenges and opportunities connected with migration.
 
I am very grateful for the time I could live and work in Ireland. Here I could only mention a few special and rewarding moments of those years. However, I am deeply grateful to all our partners who we worked and cooperated with in all the fields of the arts, culture and education. Without them the work of a cultural institute would neither be meaningful nor successful, it would become a one-way road. Much obliged I am also to my colleagues, in Limerick and at the institute in Dublin, some of them are still there, others are new. I wish them and the institute all the best for their successful work in their beautifully restored and new premises.