TV review: a visiting German professor turns out to be a committed Nazi party member

Nazi sa Ghaeltacht investigates what Ludwig Muhlhausen was up to when he travelled around Ireland taking photos

Nazi sa Ghaeltacht on TG4

Nazi sa Ghaeltacht (TG4 and TG4 Player) had me worried at the start.

I love the premise. A German professor of Celtic Studies visits Teileann in the Donegal Gaeltacht in the late 1930s to collect and record local folklore. There is talk that he is a Nazi spy, particularly when he is spotted taking photographs of the small pier in the harbour — handy if you ever want ed to re-stock a U-Boat. Add in the name of the show —  Nazi sa Ghaeltacht — and your money is on Professor Ludwig Mu h lhausen being at least a bit of a spy.

But then the presenter, Kevin Magee, appears at the top of the show and he doesn’t seem so sure. Neither is a woman he interviews, a relative of a man who had dealings with Muhlhausen, who says that we will never know if he actually was a spy.

The show isn’t called  Nazi sa Ghaeltacht?  I don’t want to hear about an obscure man who might have been a Nazi. I wondered if they had oversold the show.

They hadn’t. We learn that Mu h lhausen was a fervent Nazi, who returned to Germany before war broke out and actually became a Lord Haw Haw as Gaeilge, broadcasting Nazi propaganda in Irish to try and win the native Irish speakers over in case of an invasion.

Magee is the perfect host: curious and engaged, rather than slick and objective, which can leave a lot of these things feeling dry.

Nazi sa Ghaeltacht: presenter Kevin Magee at the Reichstag building in Berlin

I feel sorry for the woman who said we’ll never know the truth about Mu h lhausen, because five minutes later Magee was showing him out to be a committed party member since the early 30s. From then on, we were shown his progress around the map of Ireland with a little swastika icon, which must have been put in by a fan of Dad’s Army.

There are some lovely colourful touches throughout. Mu h lhausen polished his Irish on the Blasket Islands off Kerry, so when he arrived up to the Donegal Gaeltacht, they hadn’t a clue what he was saying.

A local notes that he is a genteel man with a fierce temper at times, and that he also likes Irish whiskey. Could there possibly have been a link?

Mu h lhausen has grand ideas for improving the efficiency of Irish farming and fishing, just like that bore you met on holidays who can’t help sharing how he’d improve the local economy.

Best of all, he reckons the Irish wouldn’t mind another spell of colonisation and would probably welcome the Germans.

Magee paints a rounded picture of the man and Ireland in the 1940s, revealing that the photos Mu h lhausen took of Teileann pier ended up in a German army handbook, in case they ever decided to invade.

T here is no massive reveal here, despite the steer at the start to make us think he was just a misunderstood German. But it’s a brilliant slice of a disappearing life at the edge of Ireland, visited by a 'nice man' with a fast temper who thought that he could help. Give it a watch.