Letters

More to Adolf Mahr than ‘Tomb Raider’ documentary suggests

Balance and context required in assessing life and work of Mahr

Mon May 30 2022 - 00:11

Sir, – Ardal O’Hanlon can only be as good as the script he had to use on his BBC and RTÉ programme, which deals with politics and the quest for racial identity in 1930s Ireland. It is regrettable to see Adolf Mahr, the former director of the National Museum of Ireland, one of the finest European pre-historians of the age and the person mainly responsible for bringing the Harvard archaeological mission to Ireland, dismissed in such an unhistorical way.

Mahr was a German-born archaeologist who was appointed keeper of Irish antiquities at the National Museum in 1927. He was promoted to director in the early 1930s. Instead of consistently reminding the viewer of his contemptible Nazi connections, which are to be deplored, Mahr’s cultural role in Ireland and his contribution to the National Museum and Irish archaeology, which were enormous, ought to have been recognised. He was not even acknowledged as the main academic and social host of the Harvard mission while they were in Ireland. Mahr’s work with Hencken and the Harvard mission resulted in amazing publications, which remain standards to this day. Much of the necessary conservation and back-up work was carried out at the National Museum. We might have been told en passant how Maher revolutionised the branding and identity of the museum, its collections and fieldwork policies. He made Irish prehistoric and early Christian treasures central to Museum exhibitions, highlighting the high cross casts at the entrance. Of Protestant heritage, he prepared the magnificent album on Christian Art in Ancient Ireland to coincide with the Eucharistic Congress in 1932 and produced the first and best overview of Irish Prehistory (1938). This was published by the Prehistoric Society, of which to date he remains the only Irish-based president.

Dr Mahr negotiated the acquisition of the Bender Collection of oriental art from its Dublin-born Jewish donor. Arising from his visits to the Boyne and Aran, where he advised Robert Flaherty, the documentary director, he began a collection of traditional crafts. This culminated in the folklife collection, which is now the basis of the Country Life Museum in Castlebar. Mahr even made a radio documentary for 2RN with a visiting Swedish scholar, which marks the beginning of the popular communication of archaeology in Ireland.

An enduring legacy was Mahr’s sending of young archaeologists to be trained on the Continent. The best of these was Séan P Ó Ríordáin, who returned to train students and undertake scientific excavations as at Lough Gur, Co Limerick.

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Adolf Mahr made the terrible mistake by joining the Nazi party. It damaged his life and health (look at the post-prison image used on the TV programme). But he made a major contribution to Ireland and left behind a beautiful family, including his wonderful daughter Hilde, who survives near Frankfurt and whom it has been my privilege to know. His life has been well researched by several scholars who might have provided balance and context to this most unhistorical offering. – Yours, etc,

PAT WALLACE,

(Former director of the

National Museum

of Ireland),

Dublin 4.