German author Heinrich Böll was the quiet man of Achill, and the Irish Journal he penned about the people he knew there remains a literary classic in his homeland.

Now his painter son, René Böll, has unveiled his own exploration of the island, its landscape and its cillíní, the graveyards for unbaptised children.

In a stark series of paintings, photographs and poems, Böll explores the dynamic between the silence about the period and in the landscape familiar to him on regular visits since the 1950s. “I saw these places as a child and never forgot them,” said Böll (66). “Now I’m a grandfather the memories came back very strongly.”

His research turned up 25 such sites on Achill and the Currane peninsula – nine more than listed in the National Monument Directory, something he suggests reflects ongoing local resistance to addressing a troubling tradition. “It’s still a painful memory, and I understand the unwillingness of parents to talk about it, but there are many other people who want to forget it all.”

Lost landscape

In strong, primary colours Böll’s paintings explore the lost landscape of the missing children, occasionally working in images of fathers whose responsibility it was to bury their unbaptised children with neither the mother nor a priest present.

The artist hopes to trigger memories of lost lives and suppressed traumas. Irish priests compounded the tragedy of losing a child by informing mourning mothers that, as their dead babies had not been freed of original sin through baptism, they were doomed to an eternity in limbo with no hope of salvation.

In a catalogue Böll points out that, though this was never official church teaching, it was the reality for generations of Irish Catholics.

Cillíní – Graveyards of Unbaptised Children on Achill Island is at Landesmuseum Bonn until January 4th.