Survivors of the German SS Libau (known as the Aud) and the U19 submarine mission to Ireland at Dublin Airport, Easter 1966.
Commemoration of history, ironically enough, tends to have very little to do with the past. It is generally much more concerned with contemporary political circumstances and agendas. Talk around inviting members of the British royal family to Dublin for the centenary of the Easter Rising sparked considerable controversy last year. UCD Professor Diarmaid Ferriter questioned the wisdom of such a move, correctly stating that “reconciliation is very important but do we have to share everything.” Just last week, it emerged that Enda Kenny has invited David Cameron to visit Ireland to participate in the centenary commemorations.
In the face of it all, and with talk of parity between the events on the streets of Dublin and the involvement of Irishmen in the First World War, one would almost forget the involvement of the German state in the Easter Rising. Will the German Ambassador be present on the podium of O’Connell Street come Easter Sunday? It would seem more than a little logical, given that an invite has been handed to a British Prime Minister. Both states, after all, were protagonists in the events of Easter Week.
I would maintain that James Connolly was right on a lot of things, but he certainly wasn’t right on Germany’s role in the First World War in the months directly leading up to the Easter Rising.* While the defiant slogan ‘We Serve Neither King Nor Kaiser but Ireland’ hung over Liberty Hall shortly after the breakout of the war, Connolly’s newspaper, The Workers’ Republic, became increasingly sympathetic to the German state as the war progressed. Germany, like Britain, was directly responsible for the unprecedented slaughter of working class men. In retrospect, it was the great misfortune of the European left that right across the continent progressive movements rallied behind their respective national war efforts, in a war that had nothing to offer them. Socialists, trade unionists and even vote-seeking British suffragettes banged the recruitment drum and played their part in the farce and tragedy. The Socialist leader Rosa Luxemburg correctly condemned those on the left who had become “the shield-bearers of imperialism in the present war.” Perhaps the greatest words of condemnation of the barbarism in the early stages of the conflict though came from Connolly, who wrote that:
Should the working class of Europe, rather than slaughter each other for the benefit of kings and financiers, proceed tomorrow to erect barricades all over Europe…we should be perfectly justified in following such a glorious example and contributing our aid to the final dethronement of the vulture classes that rule and rob the world.
The removal of the ‘We Serve Neither King Nor Kaiser’ banner reported in the nationalist newspaper Scissors and Paste (Image Credit: South Dublin Libraries Local Studies Blog, http://www.localstudies.wordpress.com)
Yet the old dictum that ‘England’s Difficulty is Ireland’s Opportunity’ no doubt influenced Irish separatists of all stripes to seek what assistance they could get from Germany. Connolly’s softening on the German question owed more to what he viewed as tactical necessity than anything else, and as has been noted elsewhere by Brian Hanley, he “became convinced that a blow had to be struck militarily against the British Empire. This involved an alliance with the Irish Republican Brotherhood and tacitly with Germany as well.” Still, articles favorably comparing one Empire to another in the pages of The Workers’ Republic were a far-cry from the earlier unequivocal condemnation of the “vulture classes” that knew no nationality.
The German state did provide assistance of sorts, with the sending of the SS Libau to Ireland. If the name means nothing to you, it’s perhaps because it has become better known in Ireland today as the Aud. In 1916, the steamship masqueraded under the name of a Norwegian vessel, in the hope it could succeed in landing thousands upon thousands of rounds of ammunition, captured Russian rifles from the Eastern Front, machine guns, grenades and more besides of the southern coast to assist the Irish Volunteers. The<emSS Libau, and the U19 submarine which brought Roger Casement to Ireland, are a core part of the story of Easter Week. Ultimately, the crew of Captain Karl Spindler made the decision to scuttle the SS Libau rather than surrender her load to British forces. The final act of Spindler’s men was to take down the decoy Norwegian flag the ship had been flying, and to hoist the Imperial German flag in its place.
A commemorative medal from 1931 in honour of Captain Karl Spindler of the Aud. (Image Credit: http://www.dnw.org)
So, what’s the relevance of a failed arms landing of the soutern coast on a blog about the history of Dublin? Well, on 6 April 1966, five men who took part in the German mission to Ireland arrived in Dublin for the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising. They were Raimund Weisbach (captain of the U19 submarine), Otto Walter, Walter Agustin, Hans Dunker and F. Sohmitz.
Of their arrival in Dublin Airport, The Irish Times wrote that “they looked rather like benevolent businessmen enjoying the pleasures of retirement, the German officers who played so big a part in the drama before the Easter Rising, as they sat in the VIP lounge of Dublin Airport to talk to newspapermen.” Weisbach recalled that Casement had “returned a pistol to him for fear of being caught with it on landing”, but that this gun had been taken from him “during the last war when English soldiers reached Hamburg.” Augustin recounted the ill-fated mission to Ireland and just how close the men had come to success, recalling that:
We were 24 hours in Tralee Bay and so close to shore one could see the coastguards on duty. A fishing smack drew near and we hung a green flag over the side – thinking it might be Casement. Next the British sloop, Bluebell, came alongside and sent a boarding party aboard. We told them we had engine trouble and we succeeded in making them drunk with whiskey.
The survivors of the Aud and U19 laying a wreath on the grave of Roger Casement, Glasnevin. April 1966.
The Germans were wined and dined during their time in Ireland, and participated in commemorative events in Dublin and Kerry. They laid a wreath in Glasnevin Cemetery at the grave of Casement, and were present at the unveiling of a monument in the south of the country. Weisbach spoke in University College Dublin, with the historian Owen Dudley Edwards noting Weisbach’s sincere admiration for Casement and his cause in The Irish Times.
2016 is a chance for us to engage with history in a way we haven’t before. The turnouts at lectures and other events so far indicate the incredible general interest in 1916 and all of its complexities. There are questions to be asked and debates to be had. It is important that the event isn’t diluted to nothing to suit a contemporary narrative. 1916 was undeniably an event of the First World War, and it was militarily backed by the German State. Arlene Foster of the Democratic Unionist Party, in attempting to snub the centenary of the Easter Rising, ultimately ended up contributing one of the most accurate statements of a politician yet in this centenary year: It was a “violent attack” on the British Empire. It would be most peculiar and a travesty of history if that Empire were to be represented on O’Connell Street come Easter Sunday and Germany was not.
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*There’s good food for thought in this recent article on Connolly, Germany and World War One for those interested in the subject.
