Koehler

The "Koehler" mentioned in Nestor's list of people to whom Stephen owes money was a friend of Joyce's named Thomas Goodwin Keohler. All the family used this form of their name, but Joyce apparently liked the German spelling better. In 1914 Thomas and his brother Robert legally changed their names to Keller, probably to avoid association with Germans as the war started. Thomas, nine years older than Joyce, was a writer, musician, and Theosophist who was deeply involved in the Irish Literary Revival. Joyce stayed connected to him all his life, unlike most of his other Dublin friends, and he may have gotten the idea for giving Bloom a job at Hely's stationery business from visiting Keohler at work there.

John Hunt 2021

Title page of Thomas Keohler's Songs of a Devotee (1906).
Source: www.abebooks.com.

Table of Contents in the same volume. Source: www.abebooks.com.