President to pen book fair in Frankfurt

THE President, Mrs Robinson, arrived in Berlin last night at the start of a week when Ireland will receive an unprecedented level of attention in Germany.

Along with the Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, and Seaus Heaney, Mrs Robinson will tomorrow open the Frankfurt Book Fair, whose theme this year is "Ireland and its Diaspora".

Mrs Robinson will be received with full military honours by President Roman Herzog this morning at Schloss Bellevue, his official residence in Berlin. Later, she will attend a lunch hosted by the prime minister of Brandenburg, Mr Manfred Stolpe, at the Cecilienhof in Potsdam, where the treaty negotiations after the second World War were held.

Mr Stolpe, a former lay head of the Protestant Church in East Germany, is the east's most popular politician despite accusations that he collaborated with the Stasi secret police.

Mrs Robinson will attend a reception for members of the Irish community in Berlin before returning to Schloss Bellevue for dinner with President Herzog.

Germany already received a massive infusion of Irish culture at the weekend in "A Day of Irish Life", with more than 1,100 events in 500 towns and cities celebrating every aspect of Irish cultural life. Co ordinated by the quarterly magazine Ireland Journal, it is the biggest decentralised cultural festival ever held in Germany and will continue until December 21st with exhibitions and tours by writers and musicians.

More than 300 Irish people living in Germany worked with local organisations to stage the events, which range from plays and poetry readings to fashion shows and cookery demonstrations; 22 German Irish friendship societies did much of the work.

"At first we thought our hope of 500 events throughout Germany was very optimistic. Now it's more than 1,100, most organised locally by people who simply love Ireland and its culture" said Ireland Journal publisher, Mr Christian Ludwig.

Germans, who identified the Irish as their favourite European neighbours in a recent opinion poll, will be seeing much more of Ireland tomorrow when the Frankfurt Book Fair begins. As the largest book fair in the world, it is the central annual event in German intellectual life. Newspapers and magazines produce large supplements on the fair each year and all the major television channels screen special book programmes.

Dozens of Irish writers, including Seamus Heaney, Roddy Doyle, Edna O'Brien, John Banville and Colm Toibin, will be in Frankfurt for readings and debates.

Luke Dodd has designed an exhibition celebrating the Irish literary tradition.

Dr Kohl will visit Ireland twice this week - he comes on Wednesday for his first official visit, and returns on Friday for an EU summit meeting.