Madam, - A piece in last Wednesday's Commercial Property supplement about the sale of 58 Nortumberland Road stated that the building was "historic" because it was the German embassy during the "Emergency" and because Eamon de Valera went there early in May 1945 to express condolences on the death of Hitler.
This is inaccurate on two counts. The building is indeed "historic" and is mentioned in histories of the time, but the German representative in Ireland during the war, Eduard Hempel, was a minister, rather than an ambassador, and the building was a "legation" rather than an embassy.
More seriously, Mr de Valera and Joseph P Walshe, the Secretary of the Department of External Affairs (by some accounts a reluctant companion) called on Hempel at his house in Dún Laoghaire/Monkstown, rather than at the legation.
At this remove, the distinction may be pedantic, but, given Dev's cast of mind, it is easy to see that he wanted to maintain the formalities of Irish neutrality and acknowledge Hempel's personal goodwill towards Ireland, while making a contrast with his more formal condolences on the death of president Roosevelt a little earlier.
Winston Churchill, despite his long acquaintance with de Valera, failed to get the point and, when he attacked Dev in his VE Day victory speech, gave the Taoiseach an opening for a devastating reply which cast him and Ireland (once again!) as classic victims of perfidious Albion.
Incidentally, according to some reports, President Hyde's secretary, Mr McDunphy, also expressed condolences to Hempel. Perhaps, some of your more erudite readers could tell us if he accompanied Dev and Walshe. Your distinguished predecessor Mr Smiley did not record where Dev and Walshe visited and ignored Mr McDunphy. - Yours, etc,
DENIS FAHEY, Drumcondra, Dublin 9.