Madam, - As an archaeologist and, inter alia, one who has visited museums and art galleries all over Europe and to some extent also in the United States of America, it is hardly surprising that I knew and have admired John and Gertrude Hunt for over 50 years now.
John Hunt was not German - many believed he was English with, allegedly, some Co Limerick ancestral connections. However, one obituary by someone who knew him well was more explicit, stating that his birthplace was in Thomond from whence his family moved to London while he was still in his teens.
I am not au fait as to when, where or how he met his wife, Gertrude, from the Black Forest in Germany, but it is clear that they both chose to live in England rather than in Germany - I always understood that this was because they disliked what they saw, no future, in Nazi Germany. In 1940, however, they left England and came over to neutral Ireland: it had always been believed that this was because the English had started rounding up and interning all German nationals - and Gertrude was German.
It seems, by the way, extremely doubtful that the Hunts could ever have met Dr Adolf Mahr, at least not here in Ireland. Dr Mahr, at the time Director of the National Museum of Ireland, was attending a conference in Germany when the war broke out and he found it impossible to return to his post in Dublin where he had spent over a decade modernising that institution; he had also to a great extent been instrumental in bringing Irish archaeology into the 20th century.
In all the time that I knew the Hunts, whether in their attractively restored lakeside house at Lough Gur, Co Limerick, in their fine large house in the Bailey, Howth, Co Dublin, and even on occasion in their London flat, in all of which places I was privileged to see and be shown much of their fabulous collection, I never heard or observed even the slightest hint that any item was acquired by other than by scrupulously honest means. If the Hunts ever unwittingly bought a looted treasure for their collection you may be sure the vendor never mentioned its provenance.
The Hunt Collection was acquired as a result of their wide and unique knowledge and appreciation of the relevant material: their knowledge had such scope that even a basket of discarded knick-knacks spotted through a window of an old junk-shop would be searched by them in case it might contain some unrealised treasure - and it sometimes did!
The Hunts had such great good taste and such wide-ranging and unrivalled knowledge of matters antique and artistic that they were universally respected and acknowledged everywhere by their peers as among the very best - and it was as internationally respected dealers in objets d'art that for the most part they earned their living.
But they were exceptional in their dealing and collecting in that, as John Hunt told me on more than one occasion, they never sold any genuinely Irish object but kept it at home in Ireland. Indeed, they spent much of the profits made from their international dealings in purchasing and repatriating Irish objects of great antiquity and value.
These they stored in their own private collection before bequeathing it to the Irish people in l978 (a handful of valuable and important non-Irish objects they kept back for their two children, John and Trudi, and Ireland owes both of them a debt also in that they intend, in true Hunt fashion, to donate them to The Hunt Museum).
Both John and Gertrude Hunt (Jack and Putzel as we knew them familiarly) were a real pleasure to have known, socially and as scholars - many of John's academic publications, mainly on aspects of late medieval Ireland, are of primary importance, notably his two-volume work on Irish Medieval Figure Sculpture, 1200-1600, published in l974 and of which James White described as "a triumph for art scholarship" in a review which he finished by saying that it "makes my awareness of my heritage as an Irishman something much more vivid than any political speech I ever heard".
Both were extremely generous and helpful with their knowledge, even to young students as I was when I first met them. And how generous and grateful they showed themselves to be when they presented their invaluable collection of treasures to the Irish people - more particularly perhaps to the people of Limerick where they were welcomed when they first settled, almost as refugees, in this country.
Quite apart from bequeathing their marvellous collection to us all, we should not forget that the setting up of the Craggaunowen Project in Co Clare, with its replica crannóg and stone-walled cashel and souterrain, was entirely due to John Hunt's inspiration and enterprise. So also was his encouraging Lord and Lady Gort to buy and restore Bunratty Castle, to furnish it with medieval furniture, tapestries and other antiques, and to allow Shannon Development Company to hold its world-famous medieval banquets there.
And add in the Bunratty Folk Park, involving the physical removal, reconstruction and furnishing of local rural house-types now long gone or fast disappearing, which was another initiative inspired by John Hunt.
Gertrude Hunt, too, continued in the same vein. Shortly after John's death in l976 she presented a priceless collection of 18th and 19th century children's clothes to the National Museum, and a couple of years later she considered starting up a travelling museum to show more of the collection to the Irish people around the country. Unfortunately the idea failed to materialise.
So let us be eternally grateful and thank the Hunts for all that they have done for us - and for North Munster in particular. If Ireland had a proper honours list for deserving people (other that asking the universities to distribute honorary degrees), something for instance such as the oft-mooted Order of St Patrick, then be assured both the Hunts would have received one.
To quote two old sayings: let us not look a gift horse in the mouth, and let us not bite the hand that feeds us. I personally believe that Dr Samuels and the Wiesenthal Centre will end up with egg on their faces - just as did George W. Bush and Tony Blair who went to war for something that just wasn't there. - Yours, etc.,
ETIENNE RYNNE,
Professor Emeritus of
Archaeology,
National University of Ireland,
Galway.