German Ambassador unveils Achill memorial to Heinrich Böll

Anton McNulty

THE German Ambassador to Ireland officially unveiled a plaque in honour of Heinrich Böll on Achill Island to mark the centenary of the German Nobel Laureate’s birth.
German Ambassador, Matthias Höpfner was one of the many guests who attended the annual Heinrich Böll Memorial Weekend on Achill over the Bank Holiday weekend which this year celebrated the 100th year of his birth in 1917.
The much celebrated Cologne-born novelist wrote much of his work while staying in Achill having first visited the island with his family on June 5, 1955. In the first three years of his visits to Achill he stayed in a house owned by the Gallagher family in Keel before he bought a cottage in the village of Dugort.
To mark his first arrival in Achill, the Achill Heinrich Böll Committee erected a plaque at the entrance to the home in Keel which was unveiled on Sunday evening by Ambassador Höpfner.
Dr Edward King, of the Heinrich Böll committee, said Böll wrote about his first visit to Achill and described the wonderful reception of the owners, Tony and Lilly Gallagher who welcomed the family with a warm fire and a fresh cooked salmon.
The home where Heinrich Böll stayed in Keel is still owned by the Gallagher family and family members were present for the unveiling of the plaque. Rene Böll, son of Heinrich said that Achill and Keel is still a special place for him and his parents never forgot the welcome given to them when they first arrived.

‘Very special time’
“I was six-years-old when I came here and my seventh birthday was here in Keel and for many years after my birthday was always in Keel. It was a very special time for us children. We were three boys, we were very free here and very welcome by the Gallagher family. Still today we are friends after 60 years.
“This was a very special place. We were welcomed, we were not [seen as] Nazis... my parents remembered this welcome, it was very important. It is still a very special place for me and I hope to come back many more times,” he said.
Böll became one of Germany’s foremost post-World War II writers and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972. Böll’s observations of island and Irish life were recorded in his 1957 book, Irisches Tagebuch (Irish Journal) which sold over two million copies in Germany alone and was deemed one of the major catalysts in attracting German tourists to Ireland.
The unveiling of the plaque to Heinrich Böll was the culmination of the weekend’s celebrations and Ambassador Höpfner commented that ‘it is great to perpetuate the heritage of Heinrich Böll here on this wonderful island of Achill where he lived and worked for a substantial period of time’.