Rudi Holzapfel

Who was Rudi Holzapfel?

Rudolf Patrick Holzapfel was an Irish poet and teacher.

His father, Rudolf Melander Holzapfel, was a Shakespeare scholar, expert on Old Master paintings, and art dealer. His mother, Mona Trew Holzapfel, was an original member of the renowned Bluebell Girls at the Folies Bergère. The Parisian dance troupe, founded in 1932 by the Dublin born Margaret Kelly, continues to perform elaborate shows at the Lido de Paris. The family relocated to America, living in California between 1946 to 1956, where Rudi Holzapfel graduated from Santa Barbara Catholic High School. From 1956 to 1970, Holzapfel worked various jobs in England and Ireland, and studied - attaining a M. Litt. with his thesis "Irish Literary Periodicals from 1900 to the Present Day" - at Trinity College, Dublin, where he edited Icarus. It was during these years that Holzapfel began to identify with Ireland and the cause of Irish nationalism; he has said he would like to be considered a true inheritor of the spiritual legacy of the Gaelic Bards. He began a lifelong study and appreciation of James Clarence Mangan, the greatest Irish poet before Yeats. In 1969, Holzapfel published James Clarence Mangan: A Checklist of Printed and Other Sources.