Professor Dorothea Siegmund Schultze, who for many years held the chair of English Literature at the University of Halle Wittenberg, Germany, died recently at her home in Halle, aged 71, following a stroke.
Her area of professional interest was middle English and she was an authority on the writings of the mediaeval mystic, Julian of Norwich. She developed an interest in Ireland and established the biennial Halle conferences on "Ireland: Culture and Society", which became the principal focus for scholarly consideration of Ireland and Irish affairs in the former German Democratic Republic.
Six conferences in all were held, between 1976 and 1988, and these seem to have been the only regular conferences on Ireland to be held anywhere on the continent during that time. Their proceedings were published in six volumes, which contain much interesting literary and historical material by scholars from both Western and Eastern Europe. Professor SiegmundSchultze herself made two contributions to them, one on St. Patrick and the other on Giraldus Cambrensis.
She made several visits to Ireland and had many friends here. With the assistance of the Cultural Relations Committee of the Department of Foreign Affairs, she helped organise exchanges of books and cultural materials between this country and the German Democratic Republic. The Irish ambassador to the GDR, Mr James Kirwan, paid tribute to her work at the opening of the sixth Halle conference in 1988.
Her father was a social democrat, who was arrested and exiled to the countryside during the Nazi regime. After the war she became active in local politics in Halle, wishing to take part in building a new, progressive Germany and interesting, herself particularly in issues relating to women's rights' and working conditions. She joined the Socialist Unity Party and for a period was a member of the East German Volkskammer but when, as she put it, she realised that she had done as much good as she could do there, she gave up being a public representative and decided to concentrate on her university teaching and research work.
As head of her university department she encouraged generations of students and researchers, wrote numerous scholarly articles and was widely admired and respected for her professional competence, political idealism and personal warmth, generosity and kindness. She was a good friend of Ireland, followed Irish affairs closely and was always glad to hear of positive developments in this country's political and cultural life.
Her husband, the late Professor Walter Siegmund Schultze, was a leading musicologist and international authority on Handel, who was a native of Halle. For decades Dorothea actively helped him in the work of the annual Handel Festivals in that city, in whose cultural life both were leading figures.
The University of Halle has a tradition of interest in Ireland going back to the 18th century. It would be to revive a valuable cultural link between Ireland and Germany if the Halle conferences which Dorothea SiegmundSchultze organised could be re established in a united Germany, now that the political turmoil following reunification has subsided. There could be no more appropriate tribute to a remarkable woman, whose work embodied the best traditions of German intellectual life. She is survived by her son, daughter and grandchildren.