which had returned to family ownership, though it was bereft of the managerial skills of its founder, Felix Meyer, who died on 14 April 1950. A plant of the Rota firm had been established at Säckingen in Germany, on the southern edge of the Black Forest area, but mindful of the events of the Nazi period, the Hennigs could not entirely reconcile themselves to the land of their origins and took up residence in nearby Basel, Switzerland, Hennig commuting from there over the border daily to manage the firm. While less stressful than the paid employment he had known in the postwar years in Ireland, it was a humdrum task in which fundamentally had no interest, but it ensured his family's financial stability and was seen by him as a duty to the memory of his revered father-in-law. The firm was years later to become a subsidiary of the Japanese Yokogawa group. Even after leaving Ireland (to which he never returned) Hennig continued to write and research on Irish subjects and can be considered the pioneer of what he himself termed Irlandkunde (German-Irish studies), but also on historical subjects concerning Catholic liturgy and especially in the field of research on the figure of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In 1967 he was made an Extraordinary Member of the Abt-Herwegen-Institut für Liturgische und Monastische Forschung (Abbot Herwegen Institute for Liturgical and Monastic Research) of Maria Laach Abbey, near Bonn. Despite the initial difficulties in gaining local acceptance in the somewhat clannish Basle society, Hennig did benefit from the renewed possibility of publishing in German and from the residence in the city from 1948 of his friend Jaspers. In 1970 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Basel. In 1971 he was granted Swiss citizenship. Death Hennig died on 11 December 1986 in Basel, of a thoracic tumour from which he had suffered for some years. At his wish the body was cremated and the urn buried without identification in the communal grave of Basel's Hörnli cemetery. This choice was made out of solidarity with the victims of Nazism. Publications Hennig's work, dispersed in many different publications, was in part brought together in various retrospective collections: John Hennig, Literatur und Existenz, Ausgewählte Aufsätze, Carl Winter, Heidelberg, 1980. John Hennig, Goethes Europakultur, Goethes Kenntnisse des nicht deutschsprachigen Europas, Rodopi, Amsterdam, 1987. John Hennig, Goethe and the English Speaking World, Peter Lang, Berne,