Joe O'Byrne: ‘We're having the reactivation of the type of politics that we saw in the early 1930s'

Irish Times

28-05-2025

Joe O'Byrne owes two long-dead German twentysomethings a debt of gratitude. But not solely that, he says; he also owes them what he calls 'a debt of exactitude'. His second World War novel The Red Orchestra in Blue – published on the 80th anniversary of VE Day – is a fictionalised account of young couple Harro Schulze-Boysen and Libertas Haas-Heye as they evolve from being the cultured darlings of Berlin society into fearless resistance fighters.
Once welcomed in elite Nazi circles (aristocrat Libertas was given away by Hermann Göring at their 1936 wedding), this extraordinary pair became part of the secret anti-Nazi resistance network of artists, intellectuals and allies dubbed The Red Orchestra by the German military-intelligence service.
Both Luftwaffe officer Harro and his writer wife Libertas had been involved in the resistance movement before the war, but once war was declared, such activities were reclassified as treason and punishable by death.
O'Byrne first came across their story when studying for an MA in German literature. He initially wrote a screenplay about them, but came to believe Harro and Libertas were better suited to the expanse and interiority of a novel. From the outset he wanted to keep faith with their authentic selves, and 'Be true to how they lived, what they said, what they were, what they might have been'.
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The Red Orchestra in Blue, which is also a homage to Berlin (O'Byrne lives in Berlin and Dublin), conjures up two brave, brilliant and charismatic individuals. Set during 1939-1942, it depicts Harro and Libertas as companions, comrades and co-conspirators. Their story is both a very public tale of heroism and tragedy, and the private love story of two complex and ambitious individuals whose legacy has become as deeply interconnected as their lives.
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German president tackles uncomfortable statistic: every second German favours 'drawing a line' under Nazi past
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This is O'Byrne's first novel to be published, although he has written plenty ('probably 12,' he says cheerfully). The novel's original publication date of May 2020 was one of many literary casualties of Covid, and he found its cancellation difficult.
'For a couple years after that, I didn't write any more. I started a number of ideas for books - about four or five - and couldn't finish. And then last year I got one of them to the end of a draft.'
The next novel he hopes to publish is Deposition. Set in the Liberties area of Dublin, its dual timeline incorporates the present day and the mid-18th century. The novel he drafted last year, The White Butterfly, takes place in Havana in 1894 and contemporary New York.
'There are writers who like to keep in the same furrow and I don't,' he says. 'I think it's because I work in theatre a lot, where you tend to chop and change.' In addition to writing and directing for film, television and radio, his many theatre credits include Frank Pig Says Hello and The Dead School by Patrick McCabe. He also directed and co-adapted Roddy Doyle's The Woman Who Walked into Doors and The Five Lamps for the stage, and Gary Brown's Dockers.
'Writing a novel is a long process. If you're writing a play you might have a first draft in four weeks. It might take longer, but four weeks is actually possible, whereas with a book you're in it for the long haul. As a writer you have to be patient.'
What would he choose if he could work in one art form only? 'At this stage I would probably stick with fiction. Theatre and film are collaborative arts, but because you're engaging with so many people it becomes difficult. Not that the people are difficult, but the process can be. Sometimes you get up in the morning and think, I just want to be on my own and write, I don't want to have to go into a rehearsal room and engage with all these issues and problems and deadlines. The thing about theatre is that once you start, the deadlines come at you so fast ... It's a big ticking clock.'
It was a grand historical deed, and it was necessary, and to be commended. However, it led to significant internal resistance
—
O'Byrne on Angela Merkel's decision to admit more than a million asylum seekers into Germany
A third significant character in the novel is Polish-born singer and musician Martin Rosenberg (also known as Rosebery d'Arguto), who was arrested by the Gestapo in 1939 and deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he secretly set up a choir of Jewish prisoners.
Rosenberg's character is introduced with a vivid and insightful description of him as living through three maps: that of Poland when ruled by the tsar of Russia; independent Poland after the first World War; and finally that of 'the expanding Reich when Hitler struck and overran Poland'. It is a striking image, and one with contemporary parallels, as O'Byrne notes, referencing Trump's fixations with Canada and taking control of Greenland.
Redrawing maps is just one of the similarities O'Byrne touches on between Europe of 80 years ago and today, citing the similarities between the rise of Nazism and the current growth of right-wing parties and attitudes. He finished writing The Red Orchestra in Blue in 2015, a year he describes as,
'the beginning of what you might call the current phase of the reactivation of past history,' because that was the year when German chancellor Angela Merkel allowed more than a million asylum seekers to cross the border into Germany.
'It was a grand historical deed, and it was necessary, and to be commended. However, it led to significant internal resistance,' he says, as it became a major factor in the growth of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party.
(The AfD
came second
in Germany's federal elections in February, winning a record 152 seats in the 630-seat parliament.)
'Trump's attacks on certain institutions are reminiscent of the Nazi attacks on the education system and cultural institutions,' he says. 'When the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain came down, people used the phrase 'at the end of history'. Unfortunately history is not over; history has been reactivated. It just went into abeyance, into slumber mode, and now we're having the reactivation of the type of politics that we saw in the early thirties.' In the novel, Harro says, 'It was all an abuse of confidence, the whole Nazi affair.'
As democracy retreats, and culture, science and education are under threat, it's hard not to hear echoes of 1930s Europe all around us today, and O'Byrne's wish for the novel is that it contributes 'to a discussion or argument about the perils of where we're heading at the moment.'
The five-year delay in publishing may yet be to O'Byrne's advantage, as interest in second World War literature continues to grow, particularly since the publication of Anthony Doerr's Pulitzer Prize-winning All the Light We Cannot See, which was adapted by Netflix in 2023. Persephone Books recently reissued Sally Carson's Crooked Cross, which in 1934 depicted the rise of Nazi tyranny with horrifying accuracy.
O'Byrne also explores the value of culture when it is pitted against what Harro describes as 'the march of steel'. Harro and Libertas were so involved in Berlin's cultural life that they would have witnessed the arts being subverted and crushed.
'Most of the artists we might consider the great artists in Germany in the '20s were considered degenerates and so their art was swept aside,' he says. 'They still did have cabarets, but they were very sanitised. The theatres had a limited, more classical repertoire, and classical music was a key part of the cultural offering. Harro and Libertas would have witnessed that, in fact, culture can only do so much.'
From jazz (the 'In Blue' of the novel's title) to cabaret, classical music and the popular hits of the day, music flows like a river through this novel - of all the arts, O'Byrne believes music is the spirit that cannot be crushed.
'Stories like this have to be told and retold,' he says, seeing the role of imagination as to keep hope alive. Ina Lautenschläger, described in the novel as 'fashion model by day, clandestine printer by night', tells Harro, 'At times like these, we must fill our lives with fiction, with fantasy, this is our own little bit of theatre. They cannot take our imagination away from us. That is what makes us human.'
Hope is the key, O'Byrne believes. Of Harro and Libertas Schulze-Boysen he says, 'They were brave, they lived in hope. You don't engage in resistance unless you actually have hope.'
The Red Orchestra in Blue is published by Betimes Books