...he frames the book using what one East German dismissed as distasteful “corpse diplomacy”: the farcical, on-again off-again efforts to repatriate the remains of the Irish republican Frank Ryan. The Limerick man fought in the Spanish Civil War on the republican side and moved to Berlin in 1940, where he died of pleurisy four years later.
East Berlin’s appetite for exhuming Ryan’s remains after the war were dealt a blow when it learned of his wartime contacts with the SS. Dublin’s interest in the business was equally low, given its embrace of the Hallstein doctrine, which accepted the Bonn administration of the West German federal republic as Ireland’s only legitimate German partner.
This diplomatic stance, combined with limited economic ties, meant that contacts between Ireland and East Germany were kept to a minimum. Even the celebrated playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht was refused permission to visit Dublin in 1953...
