Two Internationalists Mourned
Two of the best died recently, a Scotsman and a German, two scholars of English, internationalists that had a special love for Ireland.
Jack Mitchell was a poet, singer and scholar, a man of conscience who died suddenly due to a heart attack on the 21st of April. He was born in Glasgow 65 years ago of Belfast parentage. He spent most of his working life at Humboldt University, Berlin as a lecturer of English Literature. He had also an academic post in Angola for a time.
Jack was an expert on Seán O'Casey (he wrote The Essential O'Casey) and on Robert Tressell (author of The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, who was born in Wexford St., Dublin). For the last number of years he has been writing his autobiography.
When the SAS killed Mairéad Farrell, Donal McCann and Seán Savage in Gibralter in March 1988, their slaughter grieved Jack for more than one reason as Mairéad was his daughter Jenny's sister in law. He wrote a long poem about this, GiB, A Modest Exposure (The Fulcrum Press). Professor Seamus Deane said:
"Jack Mitchell's poem is an angry attack on the hypocricies of a system that kills without compunction in its own defence and then assumes before the world the mantle of morality. Poetry prides itself on having some special or privileged access to language; it seems fitting, then, that a poem should try by the most traditional methods, to restore to language some of the vigour and some of the truth-telling capacity which have been drained from it."
After the GDR united with the FRG Jack and his wife Renate came to live in Ireland. It was only just before his death he wrote his last poem: Marching Season.
And while in Germany Jack Mitchell worked with the second person whose death we commemorate here. That is Dorothea Siegmund-Schultze, Professor of English Literature at the University of Halle-Wittenberg for years. She was a specialist on Medieval English and an expert on the works of Julian of Norwich.
Between 1976 and 1988 Dorothea organised academic conferences in Halle on the theme Ireland: Culture and Society and she edited the papers of the conferences in six journals. She established a book exchange between Ireland and the GDR. She was often in this country. Her father was a socialist, who was imprisoned and exiled to the countryside during the Nazi regime. After the end of the regime, Dorothea became active in local politics in Halle. She was especially interested in women's issues and work issues. She was a member of Parliament for a time. She was only 71 years old when she died last March. She is survived by her two children, Reynardt and Annette.
[ About Jack Mitchell contents page ]
©Renate Mitchell. May not be reproduced in any form online or offline without explicit written permission.