Gisela Holfter awarded the 'Bundesverdienstkreuz' for her Contribution to Irish-German Relations

Gisela Holfter, Associate Professor of German at the University of Limerick and Director of the Centre for Irish-German Studies, has been awarded the prestigious Bundesverdienstkreuz by the Federal Republic of Germany. This award, equivalent to the Order of Merit, is awarded for political, economic, social and intellectual achievements, and is the highest recognition in Germany for services to the common good.

Gisela Holfter obtained her MA from Washington University, and her doctorate from the University of Cologne. She has held teaching appointments at the Universities of Cologne and Otago, and was appointed to a Lectureship at the University of Limerick in 1996. Her research interests lie in contemporary literature and culture in the German-speaking countries, German literature in the 19^th, 20^th and 21^st centuries, and they currently focus on German-speaking exiles in Ireland between 1933 and 1945, in connection with which she has held the Martin Miller and Hannah Norbert-Miller Fellowship at the IMLR. She has been awarded research grants by, among others, the Austrian Academy of Science, the DAAD, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, and the Fulbright Commission.

Her publications include books and articles on Heinrich Böll, Hilde Domin, Petra Kelly, travel literature, Swiss-Irish relations, and edited together with Godela Weiss-Sussex, Wandern und Plaudern mit Fontane. Literarische Begegnungen mit der Mark-Brandenburg heute (Berlin: Quintus, 2019), a volume of specially commissioned texts by contemporary authors creatively engaging with Fontane’s Wanderungen (1862).