14 Facts About Adolf Mahr

Adolf Mahr was an Austrian archaeologist, who served as director of the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin in the 1930s, and is credited with advancing the work of the museum substantially.

Adolf Mahr was born in May 1887 in Trent in the southern reaches of the Habsburg Empire.

Adolf Mahr's mother, Maria Antonia Schroll, like his father, was a German from the Sudetenland.

Adolf Mahr was brought up as a Roman Catholic, later becoming an atheist, and later still Protestant.

Adolf Mahr served in the Austrian Army in 1906, attaining the rank of lieutenant, and then studied geography and prehistory at the University of Vienna, where he sustained a long-term arm injury while duelling.

Adolf Mahr went to work for a museum in Linz, Austria's third city, and then the Natural History and Prehistoric Museum of Vienna, where he rose to the ranks of curator and deputy director of a section.

Adolf Mahr arrived in Ireland in 1927 to work as Senior Keeper of Antiquities in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin, succeeding Walther Bremer.

Adolf Mahr implemented the recommendations of Professor Nils Lithberg on reorganisation of the collections, and otherwise worked to bring order to the museum's holdings.

Notwithstanding his leadership of the local Nazi organisation, Adolf Mahr worked with wealthy Jewish donor, Albert Bender of San Francisco, and they exchanged letters over several years.

Later, Adolf Mahr was arrested and accused of being a Nazi spy, with a claim that he used his position as Director of the National Museum to plan Hitler's invasion of Ireland.

Adolf Mahr sought to return to his directorship, and the Taoiseach was originally in favour, given his achievements, but there was opposition from Ireland's Head of Military Intelligence, and a vocal TD, James Dillon.

Adolf Mahr died of heart failure in Bonn while preparing for a new job, on 27 May 1951.

In 1921 Adolf Mahr married Maria van Bemmelen, daughter of the Dutch university professor and zoologist Johan Frans van Bemmelen.

Adolf Mahr knew Ireland better than she knew Germany, the English language better than the German one; and recognised Berlin hardly at all.