Böll's foreign travels

The following selection is made in accordance with the author's own records entered in his notebooks, which list a total of 602 journeys made between 1955 and 1985, many of them with his wife and his sons.

1955

Great Britain October (England: London - Leicester - Newcastle - Oxford; Scotland: Aberdeen - Glasgow)

1956

Ireland summer months (tour of Ireland: Keel - Limerick - Killarney - Dublin - Keel)

Denmark/Sweden October (Copenhagen - Stockholm - Uppsala - Linköping - Gothenburg)

Poland December (Warsaw - Cracow)

1957

Denmark August/September (Copenhagen and on the coast)

Belgium October (Brussels - Bruges - Antwerp - Ghent)

1958

France/Ireland summer months (Rouen - Paris - Le Havre - Fishgard - Kilkenny - Keel)

Netherlands December (Utrecht - Amsterdam - Rotterdam)

1959

Belgium April (Antwerp - Ghent - Brussels)

1960

Ireland May - September (Dublin - Dugort - Cork - Limerick - Galway)

1961

Czechoslovakia May (Prague, Brno)

Italy/Jugoslavia June - August (Verona - Bologna - Siena - Rome (guest of honour at the Villa Massimo) - Venice - Rijeka - Ljubljana - Trieste)

1962

Ireland July - August (Belfast - Achill Island - Dublin)

USSR September/October (Moscow - Leningrad)

1963

Ireland April - September (Dublin - Dugort)

1964

France March/April (Marseille)

Ireland July - October (Achill Island)

Netherlands December (The Hague - Amsterdam - Delft)

1965

Ireland April/May (Dugort)

USSR July/August (Moscow - Leningrad - Riga)

1966

Netherlands/Belgium January (The Hague - Bruges)

Ireland July/August (Dugort)

USSR September/October (Moscow - Leningrad - Tbilisi)

1967

Italy June (Rome - Siena)

Austria July (Vienna)

Ireland July - September (Dugort)

1968

Czechoslovakia August (Prague, with son René, at the time of the invasion of the country by the forces of the Warsaw Pact)

1969

Greece/Israel May - June

Italy September - October (Elba - Florence - Pisa)

1970

USSR March - April (Moscow)

Italy October (Rome - Naples)

Netherlands December (The Hague)

1971

Austria/Hungary May (Vienna - Budapest - Vienna)

Ireland August/September (Dublin - elected President of the international PEN Club in Dun Laoghaire on 29 September - Dugort)

USA October - December (New York - San Francisco - San Diego)

1972

USSR February/March (Moscow - Leningrad - Tbilisi - Yalta - Moscow)

Italy/Greece/Israel October/November (Rome - Athens - Jerusalem - Sinai)

Sweden/Denmark December (Stockholm: conferment of the Nobel Prize - Copenhagen)

1973

Italy December (Sicily: Taormina - Syracuse - Catania)

Ireland/Great Britain November/December (Dublin: honorary doctorate of Trinity College, Dublin - Achill - Birmingham - London)

1974

Austria/Jugoslavia May (Vienna - Belgrade - Ochrid - Belgrade - Vienna)

France September (Paris)

Spain October/November (Madrid - Granada)

Israel/Greece December (Jerusalem - Athens)

1975

Denmark February (Copenhagen)

Greece March/April (Corfu)

Netherlands April (Amsterdam)

France/Portugal October/November (Paris - Lisbon)

1976

Switzerland (several annual visits for health reasons until 1985)

1977

France/Switzerland April - May (Metz - Nancy - Belfort - Basle - Hochwald - Langenbruck - Bärenwil)

Italy December 77/January 78 (Rome - Pompeii - Florence -Assisi - Milan

1978

France March (Paris)

1979

Malta March

USSR July/August (Moscow - Vladimir - Susdal)

Ecuador November 79/February 80 (Quito: operation for a serious vascular condition in the right leg)

1980/81

Switzerland/France November 80 to February 81 (Basle - Hochwald - Menton)

1983

Ireland May (Dugort)

1984

France December (Cannes)

1985

Great Britain February (London)

Switzerland/Italy March (Hochwald - Lugano - Ascona)

Netherlands June (Scheveningen)

 

 

Ireland

Visits:

1954 to 1957: yearly visits lasting several weeks, sometimes months

1958: July and August

1960: May to September

1962: June to August

1963: April to September

1965: April and May

1966: July and August

1967: July to September

1971: August and September

Böll was elected President of the International PEN Club at its meeting in Dun Laoghaire.

1973: November and December

1983: May

In his workbook (see p. 49) Heinrich Böll records that during his visits to Ireland he composed a total of 68 works, the longest of these being 'The bread of our early years' (1955).

An indication of Böll's special relationship with Ireland is provided by the many Irish works that he and Annemarie translated.  

Apart from 'Irish Journal' (1957) and the film 'Ireland and her Children' (1961), which afford the best-known evidence of his affinity with Ireland, there have appeared over the years numerous reviews and essays that complete his picture of Ireland:

The World of Sean O'Casey, on the first performance of 'Red roses for me' (1957)

On the new translation of Synge, on the occasion of the premiere of 'Playboy of the Western World', newly translated by A. and H. Böll (1960)

On Synge 'A True Hero' (1960)

Kennedy, Ireland and the Great Hunger, on Cecil Woodham-Smith, 'The Great 

Hunger' (1963)

Brendan Behan, obituary (1965)

Thirteen Years Later, an essay (1967) - published 13 years after Böll's first visit to Ireland.

Wild Poetry of Curses, on Sean O'Casey's autobiography (1969)

The Causes of the Troubles with Northern Ireland, an essay (1970)

Irisches Tagebuch (Irish Journal)

Published in book form in 1957, its eighteen constituent parts date from 1954 onwards; most had been printed before.  'Irish Journal' has since become 'required reading' for tourists; by 1991 a million copies of the paperback edition alone, published by dtv, had been sold.

Böll opens the work with the following sentence:

"This Ireland exists: but whoever goes there and fails to find it has no claim on the author."