Adolf Mahr has been described by Irish historians as a possible Nazi spy and was, according to John P. Duggan, ‘handily placed’ in the National Museum.32 Mahr became a member of the Nazi party on 1 April 1933, a year before his appointment as Director of the National Museum. It seems that de Valera was aware of Mahr’s links with Nazism in the 1930s but it is not known if he had this information prior to making the appointment. Frederick Boland, the Assistant Secretary of the Department of External Affairs, described Mahr in 1939 as ‘the most active and fanatical National Socialist in the German colony here’.33 Mahr had communicated his decision to resign as leader of the Nazi party in Ireland to the government in July 1938.34 He was not hiding his allegiance to the Nazi party and had corresponded in friendly and open terms with one of the Harvard team, the prehistorian Hallam L. Movius, about his political views.35 According to Dermot Keogh, Mahr, as Director of the National Museum was in a position ‘to observe as an insider Irish politics and society’.36 But Mahr wasn’t simply an observer. As Director of the most important cultural institution in the Irish Free State his position allowed him to influence the direction of Irish archaeology at a very important time culturally, politically and economically. O’Donoghue’s view was that it was Mahr’s position as a Nazi leader during the 1930s which gave him influence that he would otherwise not have wielded as a ‘humble museum director’37 is incorrect. The ‘humble museum director’ working under a nationalist government was the custodian of the past of a nation struggling to define itself as non-British, Irish and European within a global Celtic context. The Nazi regime did not consider its archaeologists to be ‘humble’. In Germany, the Nazis took over many institutions and generously funded research in prehistoric archaeology. They also controlled archaeological institutions in countries after occupation.38 Mahr was a founder member, along with Seamus Ó Duillearga and others, of the German Society for Celtic Studies, established in Berlin on 25 January 1937.39 The society was described in the Irish Times as ‘non-political and non-sectarian’; its aim was ‘to spread the knowledge of Celtic culture and languages in Germany, and to establish cultural and social relations between the Germanic and Celtic peoples’.40
The arrival of the Harvard Mission to Ireland was a godsend for Mahr, who was suddenly in the position to excavate a myriad of sites for which he previously would simply not have had the financial resources. He could see an opportunity for gaining knowledge about Irish archaeology and training Irish archaeologists in innovative techniques. There was also the possibility of self-aggrandisement as he could claim the credit for this massive cultural project. Mahr’s own eugenic thinking, which was the basis for Nazi ideology, would have made him partial to the anthropological views of Hooton and the Harvard team, explained in more detail in the next chapter.41 Irish archaeologists including Joseph Raftery, S.P. Ó Ríordáin and Michael V. Duignan were all trained at the National Museum under the tutelage of Adolf Mahr.42 They were given opportunities such as travelling studentships abroad and received scientific training on the Harvard and Unemployment Scheme sites. Joseph Raftery was appointed Keeper of Irish Antiquities at the National Museum in 1949 and later became Director in 1976.
Ó Ríordáin, a Catholic, had worked as a dockyard apprentice and earned a qualification as a teacher. While teaching in Cork he studied archaeology under Canon Patrick Power at UCC and took other courses in Celtic Studies.43 Canon Power, ‘whose competence was in the field of modern Irish, not archaeology’, had lectured on Celtic Archaeology at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth between 1910 and 1931, becoming Professor of Celtic Archaeology at UCC in 1915’.44 Ó Ríordáin, one of Mahr’s protégés, was awarded a National University of Ireland (NUI) travelling studentship in 1931 and subsequently carried out research at universities and museums in Britain, Germany, Switzerland, France and Scandinavia. His study tour was co-ordinated by Adolf Mahr who advised him where to go and provided him with letters of introduction. When Ó Ríordáin returned to Ireland he took up a position at the National Museum of Ireland, where he received further training.45 In 1936, he was appointed to the position of Professor of Celtic Archaeology at UCC. On Macalister’s retirement in 1943 Ó Ríordáin was appointed to the chair of Celtic Archaeology at UCD. According to Kilbride Jones, Ó Ríordáin ‘liked to regard himself as the doyen of Irish archaeologists’.46 He influenced M.J. O’Kelly who was trained on Unemployment Scheme sites and who later went on to be the first curator of the Cork Public Museum in 1944. O’Kelly succeeded Ó Ríordáin as Professor of Celtic Archaeology at University College Cork in 1946.
In 1945 Michael V. Duignan replaced Monsignor John Hynes at UCG.47 Hynes, ‘a popular administrator and minor historian’48 and the first Catholic to hold the position of Dean of Residence, had been appointed as Professor of Archaeology in 1924. He was described by Joseph Raftery, however, as ‘completely untrained in archaeological research and methods’.49 All of these appointments in the 1930s and 1940s reflect the gradual democratisation and professionalisation of Irish archaeology – its ‘coming of age’.50
Mahr’s own ambition for the National Museum to take the place of universities in the training of future archaeologists seemed to have been temporarily achieved in the decades prior to the Second World War. With the appointment of Mahr as Keeper of Irish Antiquities at the National Museum of Ireland in 1927, a battle began for control of the interpretation of the Irish past between the National Museum of Ireland and Irish universities. This battle for intellectual supremacy was played out between Mahr and his museum allies on the one hand and the university men R.A.S Macalister and Eoin MacNeill on the other. The gradual change in attitude of younger archaeologists towards Macalister was, perhaps, fuelled by political and religious reasons, rather than professional ones. This was reflected, for example, in Macalister’s hesitation, when requested to deliver an address to the Royal Irish Academy in 1927. His choice of subject was ‘a matter of some difficulty, owing to the catholicity of the Academy’s interests’.51
When Ó Riordáin was promoted to the Chair of Celtic Archaeology at UCC, Mahr boasted that he had reason ‘to be proud that it was a pupil of mine who won this distinction, because it shows that the Museum is not only doing normal museum work but is even fulfilling the functions of a university’.52 Hencken, perhaps influenced by Mahr whom he described as ‘an old friend’,53 dismissed Macalister as ‘a nineteenth century antiquary’, commenting that:
Professor Macalister, it should be explained is British in origin rather than Irish and has the dislike of Americans common among the middle-class British combined with an unhealthy interest in American money. As the name of the chair which he holds might suggest, he is not an archaeologist in the modern sense but a 19th century antiquary. His British origin and lack of ability combined with his small stature and strict Methodism have put him at so grave a disadvantage in Dublin, at least in his own eyes, that he guards his position with the utmost jealousy.54
Macalister, as a scholarly and scientific man of his time, was very open to learning new archaeological techniques as they came into vogue and it is only in recent years that Macalister’s contribution to Irish archaeology has been fully recognised.55 Emphasis is often placed on Macalister’s lack of expertise. For example, Tarlach Ó Raifeartaigh dismissed Macalister’s reading of the ogham inscriptions in Kerry, stating that they ‘often owed more to imagination than observation’.56 Macalister’s excavation techniques were described as being ‘those of Schliemann rather than of Pitt Rivers’.57 However, Macalister was a prolific writer and produced over 350 texts, which included notes, articles and books. He was also involved in setting up the Archaeological Exploration Committee at the Royal Irish Academy. The derogatory description by Hencken does not fit with the fact that Macalister was pushing for an anthropological committee in the Royal Irish Academy in 1927 and the establishment of an