Nike Wagner () (born 9 June 1945) is a German

dramaturge A dramaturge or dramaturg is a literary adviser or editor in a theatre, opera, or film company who researches, selects, adapts, edits, and interprets scripts, libretti, texts, and printed programmes (or helps others with these tasks), consults auth ...

, arts administrator and author. She directed the festival , and has been the director of the

Beethovenfest The Beethovenfest (Beethoven Festival) is a festival of classical music in Bonn, Germany, dedicated mostly to the music of Ludwig van Beethoven who was born there. It dates back to 1845, when the composer's 75th anniversary of birth was celebrat ...

from 2014. The daughter of

Wieland Wagner Wieland Wagner (5 January 1917 – 17 October 1966) was a German opera director, grandson of Richard Wagner. As co-director of the Bayreuth Festival when it re-opened after World War II, he was noted for innovative new stagings of the operas, depa ...

, she is a great-granddaughter of

Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...

, and a great-great‑granddaughter of

Franz Liszt Franz Liszt, in modern usage ''Liszt Ferenc'' . Liszt's Hungarian passport spelled his given name as "Ferencz". An orthographic reform of the Hungarian language in 1922 (which was 36 years after Liszt's death) changed the letter "cz" to simpl ...

. She devoted books to the

Wagner family The family of the composer Richard Wagner: Family of Carl Friedrich Wagner Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Wagner (1770–1813), a police actuary ∞ 1798 Johanna Rosine Pätz (1778–1848), daughter of a baker (after being widowed, in 1814 she becaome th ...

and its cultural and political influence.

Career

Wagner was born in

Überlingen Überlingen is a German city on the northern shore of Lake Constance (Bodensee) in Baden-Württemberg near the border with Switzerland. After the city of Friedrichshafen, it is the second largest city in the Bodenseekreis (district), and a cent ...

Lake Constance Lake Constance (german: Bodensee, ) refers to three Body of water, bodies of water on the Rhine at the northern foot of the Alps: Upper Lake Constance (''Obersee''), Lower Lake Constance (''Untersee''), and a connecting stretch of the Rhine, ca ...

in Germany, the daughter of

and the choreographer Gertrud Reissinger. Her paternal great-grandfather was

, and she is also the great-great‑granddaughter of

. She grew up in

Wahnfried Wahnfried was the name given by Richard Wagner to his villa in Bayreuth. The name is a German compound of (delusion, madness) and (peace, freedom). Financed by King Ludwig II of Bavaria, the house was constructed from 1872 to 1874 under Bayreu ...

, Bayreuth, until her father's death in 1966, whereupon her uncle

Wolfgang Wagner Wolfgang Wagner (30 August 191921 March 2010) was a German opera director. He is best known as the director (Festspielleiter) of the Bayreuth Festival, a position he initially assumed alongside his brother Wieland in 1951 until the latter's ...

had the house measured and asked her widowed mother to pay rent. She studied musicology, literature and theatre in Berlin, and holds a Ph.D. from

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

in Evanston, Illinois, obtained in 1980 under the direction of Erich Heller. She is the author of several important books on a variety of subjects, which include Karl Kraus (''Geist und Geschlecht: Karl Kraus und die Erotik der Wiener Moderne'', Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1982 — a work based on her doctoral dissertation) and the Wagner family (''The Wagners: The Dramas of a Musical Dynasty'', Princeton, New Jersey,

Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial su ...

, 2001). Her article questioning the propriety of public subsidies given to high-profile cultural events in general, and the Bayreuth Festival in particular (at present c. US$6.5 million annually), ''Im Fadenkreuz der Kulturpolitik'', published in the July 2006 issue of ''Cicero: Magazin für politische Kultur'', engendered controversy within Germany. In 1999 Wagner became a member of the

Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung The Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung (in English German Academy for Language and Literature) was founded on 28 August 1949, on the 200th birthday of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt. It is seated in Darmstadt, ...

, and has served as its vice president since 2011. In 2001, she made a bid for directorship of the

Bayreuth Festival The Bayreuth Festival (german: link=no, Bayreuther Festspiele) is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner are presented. Wagner himself conceived ...

, together with Gérard Mortier, who had changed the

Salzburg Festival The Salzburg Festival (german: Salzburger Festspiele) is a prominent festival of music and drama established in 1920. It is held each summer (for five weeks starting in late July) in the Austrian town of Salzburg, the birthplace of Wolfgang Amad ...

, but did not expect to win. In 2004, Wagner became the director of the ', which she named ''Pèlerinages'' in honour of Liszt. She stood down from the post in September 2013. In 2013, she was named the director of the

, and assumed this post in January 2014. She has recognized Wagner's relation to Beethoven, who modeled his first composition on Beethoven's works. She focused less on Beethoven's symphonies, but presented more chamber music, often in contrast with contemporary works in the genre.

Other activities

* Bonner Akademie für Forschung und Lehre praktischer Politik (BAPP), Member of the Board of Trustees *

Deutsche Bank Deutsche Bank AG (), sometimes referred to simply as Deutsche, is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Sto ...

, Member of the Advisory Board (since 2017) *

Goethe Institute The Goethe-Institut (, GI, en, Goethe Institute) is a non-profit German cultural association operational worldwide with 159 institutes, promoting the study of the German language abroad and encouraging international cultural exchange and ...

, Member of the Committee for the Goethe Medal

Selected publications

* Nike Wagner, ''et al.'', ''Mann, sei nicht so hysterisch'' (Munich, Matthes und Seitz, 1991). * Nike Wagner, ''Wagner-Theater'' (Frankfurt am Main, Insel-Verlag, 1998). * Nike Wagner, ''Traumtheater: Szenarien der Moderne'' (Frankfurt am Main, Insel-Verlag, 2001).

Awards

* 1999: member of the

* member of the ''Literaturklasse'' of the

Sächsische Akademie der Künste The Sächsische Akademie der Künste (Saxon Academy of Arts) is a German cultural organisation for the state of Saxony, based in Dresden. Purpose The Academy is a statutory corporation to promote the arts in Saxony, make proposals for its prom ...

* 2012: Honorary professor at the PH Heidelberg bestellt Dr. Nike Wagner als Honorarprofessorin
PDF * 2013: Order of Merit of the Free State of Thuringia * 2022 Honorary doctorate of the University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar

Notes

References

* Jan Brachmann, ‘Das Zertrümmern ist langweilig geworden: Nike Wagner über Heimweh, Autoritäten, Bayreuther Marktlärm und ostdeutsche Kaffeepausen’, ''Berliner Zeitung'', August 21, 2004, p. M4 (Magazin Section) n interview with Nike Wagner * David Littlejohn, ntitled review of Nike Wagner's ''The Wagners: The Dramas of a Musical Dynasty'' ''Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association'', vol. 58, No. 4 (June 2002), pp. 828–831.