In 1988, a 22-year-old German student submitted a thesis analysing some seventy odd works on the rise of Ulster Unionism which had been written over a period of roughly one hundred years. The thesis received an award for being one of the best works submitted in that academic year, and the student was offered a job as junior lecturer at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Almost thirty years later, the same student, after a life full of twists and turns (and in the meantime living in Portugal), decided not simply to translate his thesis into English, but rather to re-write it from the perspective of a mature scholar with thirty years more of academic, professional and especially life experience. "THROUGH THE EYE OF THE SCRIBE" does not attempt, at least not primarily, to describe or even define the phenomenon of Ulster Unionism. It rather aims at presenting the different views on various aspects of this phenomenon held by authors and politicians, showing how these views have shifted over the decades, starting with contemporary sources from the 1890s up to the time of the writing of the thesis in the late 1980s.
About the Author: Ralph Hauptmann (*1965), originally a student of English, Roman and Celtic Studies, as well as Comparative Linguistics, started his professional career as a lecturer of English Linguistics and English and Irish History at the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 1991 he left academic life, studied Operations Management and spent the next 22 years first as a private lecturer of financial accounting, fiscal laws and controlling and later as a consultant of service operations and organisation development advisor, primarily in the leisure industry, managing cinemas, nature science centres, exhibitions and the like. In 2013, after getting married, he decided to give his life a completely new direction, moved to Lisbon and started a new career in the service sector. Today he works as Senior Corporate Staff Trainer and Quality Assurance Analyst for a big multinational enterprise, from time to time travelling around the globe to implement training concepts. Ralph Hauptmann has never given up his passion for the Ancient Celts and Ireland. He has in the meantime written and published one illustrated subject book and three historical novels about the Celts, for the time being only available in German, but with translation already in progress. "THROUGH THE EYE OF THE SCRIBE" is his first book exclusively published in English.