The Albert Bender archive at Mills College near San Francisco reveals a life of a remarkable grace and generosity. Bender was an Irish Jew who became California's greatest patron of the arts in the 1920s and 1930s. The son of Rabbi Dr Philip Bender, he left Dublin for San Francisco in 1882, aged 16. He made his fortune in insurance, and never married, instead pouring his considerable resources into supporting artists and institutions of learning.
His archive contains letters from W. B. Yeats, including a copy of The Lake Isle of Inisfree, written in the poet's barely legible scrawl. Among letters from Jack Yeats is a sketchbook with more than 30 miniature drawings he made on the Aran Islands. Oliver St John Gogarty was also a correspondent, referring to his trip to San Francisco in 1933 when the two became friends. (Gogarty calls Bender "the greatest humanitarian I have ever met.")
But Bender's most prolific corespondent was, under the circumstances, a most unlikely one: Adolf Mahr, director of the National Museum of Ireland, who wrote over 100 letters between 1922 and the outbreak of war in 1939. At first the letters were related to Bender's donations to the National Museum, but by the mid-1930s, Mahr's messages were purely personal, referring to family illness, gifts and hopes for a personal meeting.
What makes the correspondence remarkable is that Mahr co-founded the Irish branch of Hitler's National Socialist Party in 1934, and served as its leader until his abrupt departure to Germany shortly before World War II. Although Bender was aware of Mahr's Jewish heritage, he wasn't to know that his correspondent was a follower of the Furher and would later describe himself as "Dublin's Nazi No. 1."
In 1932, when Bender's donations of ancient Asian artworks started to arrive to the National Museum in Dublin's Kildare St, Mahr wrote a brief note of thanks. He probably expected little else to emerge from this unlikely source. But as more consignments arrived, Mahr, an Austrian-born archaeologist, felt obliged to warn Bender that his generosity was misguided.
" . . . the honest truth is that my museum is not worth such valuable gifts and such sacrifices on your part. We are not good enough an institution to be favoured with such magnificent gifts . . . You have no idea how backward in all cultural matters we here are. We have an old museum with many fine things, but they were intermingled with worst rubbish," he wrote.
To thus discourage a benefactor is a rarity in the museum world, but it was indicative of the integrity Mahr was held to possess. He adds: " . . . why shall we go to the trouble to force such a fine Far East collection . . . upon a country which is not yet mature for it? And why should I encourage you in an expenditure if I am perhaps the only man in Ireland who can fully appreciate your gifts?"
He suggests that Bender's efforts should be spent in supporting Irish archaeology, "the only branch of Dublin museum work which means something to the whole educated world."
The letter is significant because it shows Mahr compromising his position, and also placing Bender in a position of personal trust.
He confided even more in another letter describing how a group of Harvard archaeologists were refused permission by the Ancient Monuments Commission to excavate a crannog. Mahr "got so annoyed at the stupidity of my council that I simply broke the law of which I am supposed to be the watchdog. I gave them the best crannog to excavate of which I knew."
This illegal dig yielded important artefacts from the 10th century. It seems typical of Mahr's approach to many issues: visionary, but foolhardy.
"We've had the artefacts on display for many years, but we never knew until now how it all came about," says Dr Pat Wallace, current director of the National Museum. "It seems reckless to break the law like that, but Mahr was right to do what he did. He knew that the Harvard team would be the first to excavate in Ireland using scientific methods. Since then, every dig in Ireland has followed similar practices, and this has prevented the destruction of hundreds of sites."
It was inevitable that Hitler's rise to power would enter Mahr's correspondence with Bender. Bender must have made a barbed remark in one of his letters, for on April 28th, 1933, Mahr sent an angry reply: "I am very grateful also for your renewed kindness to send the nice postage stamps and cards for my boy . . . but you make it difficult for me to accept such a present when in practically the same letter you speak of my country in terms like `14th century barbarism.'
"I had sincerely hoped that the quarrel between the present German government and Jewry would not have entered our correspondence. I have never alluded to the fact that, after all, there was a thing called the Balfour Declaration (1916) by which international Jewry was enlisted to support the anti-German cause . . .
"But you are not Mr Wilson or Mr Trotzky and I am not Mr Hitler. Why can we not discuss more pleasant things in which we both take a common and purely human interest? "The Irish have filled the whole world for several centuries with their grievances. Could anybody expect that a people, 20 times as numerous, would silently rot away in misery and humiliation in order as not to disturb the equanimity of the powers and people that are responsible for the 1919 `treaties', that were offered at the point of the sword . . . "
The Nazi issue was never mentioned again. Bender continued to make his donations, and Mahr continued to form them into a special collection. In 1934 the Augusta Bender Memorial Room of Ancient Asian Art, named after Albert's mother, was opened by Taoiseach Eamon de Valera. Guests included members of the Yeats family, Gogarty and Irish-Jewish artist Estella Solomons.
A month after the opening, De Valera appointed Mahr director of the National Museum. The degree of friendship between de Valera and Mahr, and the question of when the Taoiseach became aware of Mahr's political activities were later to prove controversial.
With the Bender Room already full of Asian artefacts, Mahr wrote to Bender in 1936 to ask him to cease his donations. "It is naturally always possible to insert things in a room which is already full, but the disadvantage is that the arrangement gets blurred." Bender acquiesced, but the letters between the men were warmer than ever. In June of 1938, when Mahr passed control of the room over to another official, he wrote that "there is no reason why we should not continue to keep up our direct personal contact which has given me so very much pleasure in the past."
Mahr evidently saw no conflict in maintaining a friendship with a Jew while actively leading a Nazi group.
As Hitler's star rose in Europe, so too did Mahr's. In 1937, it was he, rather than the German ambassador in Dublin, who attended the coronation of England's King George. Hitler also conferred upon him the title of Herr Professor.
March of 1938 saw the German annexation of Mahr's beloved Austria. At first, this wasn't discussed in his letters to California. However, seven months later, he wrote to Bender seeking assistance for a Jewish former colleague who had lost his job under the Nazis. "I beg of you most sincerely to think it over whether you think anything can be done for this man."
A month later, he again wrote to Bender asking for his help in gaining his friend entry to America. Whether Bender agreed is unknown, but the friend escaped Austria for Leeds with Bender's assistance.
Mahr's family insists he helped many Jews escape the Nazis. They say his brand of Nazism was a nationalistic one, and he had little interest in oppressing the Jews. He was anti-Semitic with regard to the economic and political power that he felt Jews represented, but not regarding Jews individually, they say.
The reasons for Mahr's departure from Ireland immediately before the outbreak of war are shrouded in controversy. In his book Hitler's Irish Voices, David O'Donoghue suggests that Mahr left to escape pressure from Irish military intelligence, and to attend a Nazi rally in Nuremburg. Mahr insisted he was in Germany to attend an international archaeology conference, and that the outbreak of war made it unsafe to return. This allowed him claim that he was on leave of absence from the museum during the war, and so in 1946 and 1947 he sought to return to his position in Dublin.
During the War, Mahr founded and directed German radio's nightly propaganda broadcasts into Ireland. He was later captured by the British and nearly died in an internment camp. The prospect of him returning to his State-funded job in Dublin sparked heated debate in the Dail. De Valera's government retired him and he never again set foot in Ireland. Nor did he ever regain the status he had enjoyed in Ireland. He lived meagerly in Bonn until his death from heart failure at 64.
Albert Bender and Adolf Mahr never met. The last letter was sent in December of 1939, when Mahr wrote from an Austrian ski resort: "A happy New Year to you and all good wishes for 1940. Was caught on leave and could not return to my museum. Hope your health is again OK."
It seems surprising that a man who achieved so much in of archaeology would risk his success by getting involved in politics. The irony may have been apparent to him if he recalled a letter he wrote to Bender in 1932: "We anthropologists look upon it (politics) with nearly complete detachment as we know that the present national and racial boundaries are a thing of very late origin and that the boundaries which separated mankind in the Stone Age are probably more important than the make-shifts of our present politicians.
"There is a growing feeling amongst anthropologists . . . to lose all interests in what is today miscalled `politics' and I should say that the world would be better off if also the politicians took less interest in politics."
