![RichardWagner](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/RichardWagner.jpg)
The German composer
Richard Wagner was a controversial figure during his lifetime, and has continued to be so after his death. Even today he is associated in the minds of many with
Nazism
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) i ...
and his operas are often thought to extol the virtues of
German nationalism
German nationalism () is an ideological notion that promotes the unity of Germans and German-speakers into one unified nation state. German nationalism also emphasizes and takes pride in the patriotism and national identity of Germans as one n ...
. The writer and Wagner scholar
Bryan Magee
Bryan Edgar Magee (; 12 April 1930 – 26 July 2019) was a British philosopher, broadcaster, politician and author, best known for bringing philosophy to a popular audience.
Early life
Born of working-class parents in Hoxton, London, in 1930, w ...
has written:
I sometimes think there are two Wagners in our culture, almost unrecognizably different from one another: the Wagner possessed by those who know his work, and the Wagner imagined by those who know him only by name and reputation.
Most of these perceptions arise from Wagner's published opinions on a number of topics. Wagner was a prolific writer who published essays and pamphlets on a wide range of subjects throughout his life. Several of his writings have achieved some notoriety, in particular, his essay ''
Das Judenthum in der Musik'' (''Jewishness in Music''), a critical view on the influence of Jews in German culture and society at that time. Whether Wagner's operas contain adverse caricatures of Jews or not is a controversial matter among scholars.
Wagner was promoted during the Nazi era as one of
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
's favourite composers. Historical perception of Wagner has been tainted with this association ever since, and there is debate over how Wagner's writings and operas might have influenced the creation of Nazi Germany.
There is also controversy over both the beginning and the end of Wagner's life – his paternity and his death. It is suggested that he was the son of
Ludwig Geyer
Ludwig Heinrich Christian Geyer (21 January 1779 – 30 September 1821) was a German actor, playwright, and painter.
Life and career
Born in Eisleben, he was the stepfather of composer Richard Wagner, whose biological father had died some six ...
, rather than his legal father Carl Friedrich Wagner, and some of his biographers have proposed that Wagner himself believed that Geyer was Jewish. A belief also exists that his fatal
heart attack
A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which ma ...
followed an argument with his wife
Cosima over the singer
Carrie Pringle, with whom some claim he had an amorous relationship.
Paternity
![Wagnershofar](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Wagnershofar.jpg)
Richard Wagner was born on May 22, 1813, the ninth child of Carl Friedrich Wagner, a clerk in the Leipzig police service, and Johanna Rosine Wagner. Wagner's father died of
typhus
Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposure. ...
six months after Richard's birth, by which time Wagner's mother was living with the actor and playwright
Ludwig Geyer
Ludwig Heinrich Christian Geyer (21 January 1779 – 30 September 1821) was a German actor, playwright, and painter.
Life and career
Born in Eisleben, he was the stepfather of composer Richard Wagner, whose biological father had died some six ...
in the
Brühl, at that time the Jewish quarter of Leipzig. Johanna and Geyer married in August 1814, and for the first 14 years of his life, Wagner was known as Wilhelm Richard Geyer. Wagner in his later years discovered letters from Geyer to his mother which led him to suspect that Geyer was, in fact, his biological father, and furthermore speculated that Geyer was Jewish. According to Cosima's diaries (26 December 1868) Wagner "did not believe" that Ludwig Geyer was his real father. At the same time Cosima noted a resemblance between Wagner's son Siegfried and Geyer. The philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...
was one of Wagner's closest acolytes, and proof-read Wagner's autobiography ''
Mein Leben'' (My Life). It may have been this closeness that led Nietzsche to claim in his 1888 book ''Der Fall Wagner'' (''
The Case of Wagner'') that Wagner's father was Geyer, and to make the pun that "Ein Geyer ist beinahe schon ein Adler" (A vulture is almost an eagle) —Geyer also being the German word for "vulture" and Adler being both a very common Jewish surname and the German word for "eagle". Despite these conjectures on the part of Wagner and Nietzsche, there is no evidence that Geyer was Jewish, and the question of Wagner's paternity is unlikely to be settled without
DNA evidence.
Death
The frequent allegation that Wagner had an affair with the singer
Carrie Pringle, and that an argument about this with his wife Cosima precipitated his fatal heart attack, is discussed and dismissed as invention by the Wagner scholar
Stewart Spencer, who demonstrates that there is no first-hand or documentary evidence for this story.
Antisemitism
Prior to 1850 (when he was 37) there is no record of Wagner expressing any particular antisemitic sentiment. However, as he struggled to develop his career he began to resent the success of Jewish composers such as
Felix Mendelssohn and
Giacomo Meyerbeer and blamed them for his lack of success, particularly after his stay in Paris in 1840–41 when he was impoverished and reduced to music
copy-editing
Copy editing (also known as copyediting and manuscript editing) is the process of revising written material ( copy) to improve readability and fitness, as well as ensuring that text is free of grammatical and factual errors. ''The Chicago Manual o ...
. Ironically, at the same time Wagner did have considerable contact with Meyerbeer, who loaned him money, and used his influence to arrange for the premiere of ''
Rienzi
' (''Rienzi, the last of the tribunes''; WWV 49) is an early opera by Richard Wagner in five acts, with the libretto written by the composer after Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel of the same name (1835). The title is commonly shortened to ''Rie ...
,'' Wagner's first successful opera, in Dresden in 1842; Meyerbeer later expressed hurt and bewilderment over Wagner's written abuse of him, his works, and his faith. Wagner's first and most controversial essay on the subject was ''
Das Judenthum in der Musik'' ''('Jewishness in Music')'', originally published under the pen-name K. Freigedank (K. Freethought) in 1850 in the ''
Neue Zeitschrift für Musik
'Die'' (; en, " heNew Journal of Music") is a music magazine, co-founded in Leipzig by Robert Schumann, his teacher and future father-in law Friedrich Wieck, and his close friend Ludwig Schuncke. Its first issue appeared on 3 April 1834.
His ...
''. In a previous issue music critic
Theodor Uhlig had attacked the success in Paris of Meyerbeer's ''
Le prophète
''Le prophète'' (''The Prophet'') is a grand opera in five acts by Giacomo Meyerbeer, which was premiered in Paris on 16 April 1849. The French-language libretto was by Eugène Scribe and Émile Deschamps, after passages from the ''Essay on the ...
'', and Wagner's essay expanded this to an attack on supposed 'Jewishness' in all German art. The essay purported to explain popular dislike of Jewish composers, in particular Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, the latter of whom is not mentioned by name but is clearly a target. Wagner wrote that the German people were repelled by Jews due to their 'alien' appearance and behaviour: 'with all our speaking and writing in favour of the Jews' emancipation, we always felt instinctively repelled by any actual, operative contact with them.' He argued that Jewish musicians were only capable of producing music that was shallow and artificial because they had no connection to the genuine spirit of the German people.
In the conclusion to the essay, he wrote of the Jews that 'only one thing can redeem you from the burden of your curse: the redemption of
Ahasuerus
Ahasuerus ( ; , commonly ''Achashverosh'';; fa, اخشورش, Axšoreš; fa, label= New Persian, خشایار, Xašāyār; grc, Ξέρξης, Xérxēs. grc, label= Koine Greek, Ἀσουήρος, Asouḗros, in the Septuagint; la, Assue ...
— going under!' Although this has been taken by some commentators to mean actual physical annihilation, in the context of the essay it seems to refer only to the eradication of Jewish separateness and traditions. Wagner advises Jews to follow the example of Jewish convert to Protestantism
Ludwig Börne
Karl Ludwig Börne (born "Loeb Baruch"; 6 May 1786 – 12 February 1837) was a German-Jewish political writer and satirist, who is considered part of the Young Germany movement.
Early life
Karl Ludwig Börne was born Loeb Baruch on 6 May 178 ...
by abandoning Judaism. In this way Jews will take part in 'this regenerative work of deliverance through self-annulment; then are we one and un-dissevered!' Wagner was, therefore, calling for the assimilation of Jews into mainstream German culture and society - although there can be little doubt, from the words he uses in the essay, that this call was prompted at least as much by antisemitism as by a desire for social amelioration. (In the very first publication, the word here translated as 'self-annulment' was represented by the phrase 'self-annihilating, bloody struggle').
The initial publication of the article attracted little attention, but Wagner wrote a self-justifying letter about it to
Franz Liszt in 1851, claiming that his "long-suppressed resentment against this Jewish business" was "as necessary to me as
gall is to the blood". Wagner republished the pamphlet under his own name in 1869, with an extended introduction, leading to several public protests at the first performances of ''
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg''. Wagner repeated similar views in later articles, such as "What is German?" (1878, but based on a draft written in the 1860s), and Cosima Wagner's diaries often recorded his comments about "Jews". Although many have argued that his aim was to promote the integration of Jews into society by suppressing their Jewishness, others have interpreted the final words of the 1850 pamphlet (suggesting the solution of an ''Untergang'' for the Jews, an ambiguous word, literally 'decline' or 'downfall' but which can also mean 'sinking' or 'going to a doom') as meaning that Wagner wished the Jewish people to be destroyed.
Some biographers, such as
Theodor Adorno
Theodor is a masculine given name. It is a German form of Theodore. It is also a variant of Teodor.
List of people with the given name Theodor
* Theodor Adorno, (1903–1969), German philosopher
* Theodor Aman, Romanian painter
* Theodor Blue ...
and Robert Gutman have advanced the claim that Wagner's opposition to Jews was not limited to his articles, and that the operas contained such messages. In particular the characters of Mime in the ''Ring'', Klingsor in ''
Parsifal
''Parsifal'' ( WWV 111) is an opera or a music drama in three acts by the German composer Richard Wagner and his last composition. Wagner's own libretto for the work is loosely based on the 13th-century Middle High German epic poem ''Parzival ...
'' and Sixtus Beckmesser in ''Die Meistersinger'' are supposedly Jewish stereotypes, although none of them is identified as Jewish in the libretto. Such claims are disputed. Wagner, over the course of his life, produced a huge amount of written material analyzing every aspect of himself, including his operas and his views on Jews (as well as many other topics); these purportedly 'Jewish' characterizations are never mentioned, nor are there any such references in Cosima Wagner's copious diaries.
Other scholars dispute any antisemitic characterization in the operas. Katz opines that the antisemitism of Wagner should not be used as the key to interpret his arts, "In fact, without forced speculation, very little in the artistic work of Wagner can be related to his attitude toward Jews and Judaism." Milton E. Brener notes that the dwarves in Wagner's works (such as Alberich and Mime in the ''Ring''), frequently interpreted to be (negative) representation of Jewishness, were not seen as such by Wagner himself, as evidences found in Cosima's diaries show. Alberich represents "the naiveté of the non Christian world". During a vacation after ''Parsifal'', when the couple discussed the dwarves "from the view of race", they thought about "yellow (Mongols)". In 1881, Wagner showed his surprise at the fact that a Jewish actor (Julius Leban) was chosen to play a dwarf (Mime) in ''Siegfried''.
Despite his published views on Jewishness, Wagner maintained Jewish friends and colleagues throughout his life. One of the most notable of these was
Hermann Levi
Hermann Levi (7 November 1839 – 13 May 1900) was a German Jewish orchestral conductor.
Levi was born in Giessen, Germany, the son of a rabbi. He was educated at Giessen and Mannheim, and came to Vinzenz Lachner's notice. From 1855 to 1858 ...
, a practising Jew and son of a
rabbi
A rabbi () is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi – known as ''semikha'' – following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of ...
, whose talent was freely acknowledged by Wagner. Levi's position as
Kapellmeister at Munich meant that he was to conduct the premiere of ''Parsifal'', Wagner's last opera. Wagner initially objected to this and was quoted as saying that Levi should be baptized before conducting ''Parsifal''. Levi, however, held Wagner in adulation, and was asked to be a pallbearer at the composer's funeral.
Racism
Some biographers have asserted that Wagner in his final years came to believe in the
Aryanist philosophy of
Arthur de Gobineau
Joseph Arthur de Gobineau (; 14 July 1816 – 13 October 1882) was a French aristocrat who is best known for helping to legitimise racism by the use of scientific racist theory and "racial demography", and for developing the theory of the Ary ...
. However the influence of Gobineau on Wagner's thought is debated. Wagner was first introduced to Gobineau in person in Rome in November 1876. The two did not cross paths again until 1880, well after Wagner had completed the libretto for ''
Parsifal
''Parsifal'' ( WWV 111) is an opera or a music drama in three acts by the German composer Richard Wagner and his last composition. Wagner's own libretto for the work is loosely based on the 13th-century Middle High German epic poem ''Parzival ...
'', the opera most often accused of containing racist ideology. Although Gobineau's ''
An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races
''Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines'' (Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, 1853–1855) is a racist and pseudoscientific work of French writer Joseph Arthur, Comte de Gobineau, which argues that there are intellectual differen ...
'' was written 25 years earlier, it seems that Wagner did not read it until October 1880. There is evidence to suggest that Wagner was very interested in Gobineau's idea that Western society was doomed because of
miscegenation
Miscegenation ( ) is the interbreeding of people who are considered to be members of different races. The word, now usually considered pejorative, is derived from a combination of the Latin terms ''miscere'' ("to mix") and ''genus'' ("race") ...
between "superior" and "inferior" races. However, he does not seem to have subscribed to any belief in the superiority of the supposed Germanic or "
Nordic race
The Nordic race was a racial concept which originated in 19th century anthropology. It was considered a race or one of the putative sub-races into which some late-19th to mid-20th century anthropologists divided the Caucasian race, claiming tha ...
".
Wagner's conversations with Gobineau during the philosopher's 5-week stay at
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 Bayr ...
in 1881 were punctuated with frequent arguments. Cosima Wagner's diary entry for June 3 recounts one exchange in which Wagner "positively exploded in favour of Christianity as compared to racial theory." Gobineau also believed that in order to have musical ability, one must have black ancestry.
Wagner subsequently wrote three essays in response to Gobineau's ideas: ''Introduction to a Work of Count Gobineau, Know Thyself'', and ''Heroism and Christianity'' (all 1881). The ''Introduction'' is a short piece written for the ''
Bayreuther Blätter'' in which Wagner praises the Count's book:
We asked Count Gobineau, returned from weary, knowledge-laden wanderings among far distant lands and peoples, what he thought of the present aspect of the world; to-day we give his answer to our readers. He, too, had peered into an Inner: he proved the blood in modern manhood's veins, and found it tainted past all healing.
In "Know Thyself" Wagner deals with the German people, who Gobineau believes are the "superior" Aryan race. Wagner, in fact, rejects the notion that the Germans are a race at all and further proposes that we should look past the notion of race to focus on the human qualities ("das Reinmenschliche") common to all of us. In "Heroism and Christianity", Wagner proposes that Christianity could function to provide a moral harmonization of all races, preferable to the physical unification of races by miscegenation:
Incomparably fewer in individual numbers than the lower races, the ruin of the white races may be referred to their having been obliged to mix with them; whereby, as remarked already, they suffered more from the loss of their purity than the others could gain by the ennobling of their blood ..To us Equality is only thinkable as based upon a universal moral concord, such as we can but deem true Christianity elect to bring about.
Wagner's concerns over miscegenation occupied him until the very end of his life; he was in the process of writing another essay, ''On the Womanly in the Human Race'' (1883), at the time of his death, in which he discusses the role of marriage in the creation of races: "it is certain that the noblest white race is monogamic at its first appearance in saga and history, but marches toward its downfall through polygamy with the races which it conquers."
Wagner's son-in-law
Houston Stewart Chamberlain
Houston Stewart Chamberlain (; 9 September 1855 – 9 January 1927) was a British-German philosopher who wrote works about political philosophy and natural science. His writing promoted German ethnonationalism, antisemitism, and scientific ...
expanded on Wagner and Gobineau's ideas in his 1899 book ''
The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century
''The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century'' (''Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts,'' 1899) is a book by British-born German philosopher Houston Stewart Chamberlain. In the book, Chamberlain advances various racialist and especially ''v ...
'', a racist work extolling the Aryan ideal that later strongly influenced
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
's ideas on race.
Nazi appropriation
About the time of Wagner's death, European
nationalist
Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: Th ...
movements were losing the
Romantic, idealistic egalitarianism of 1848, and acquiring tints of militarism and aggression, due in no small part to
Bismarck's takeover and unification of Germany in 1871. After Wagner's death in 1883,
Bayreuth increasingly became a focus for German nationalists attracted by the mythos of the operas, who have been referred to by later commentators as the
Bayreuth Circle. This group was endorsed by
Cosima Wagner
Francesca Gaetana Cosima Wagner (née Liszt; 24 December 1837 – 1 April 1930) was the daughter of the Hungarian composer and pianist Franz Liszt and Franco-German romantic author Marie d'Agoult. She became the second wife of the German comp ...
, whose antisemitism was considerably less complex and more virulent than Richard's. One member of the circle was
Houston Stewart Chamberlain
Houston Stewart Chamberlain (; 9 September 1855 – 9 January 1927) was a British-German philosopher who wrote works about political philosophy and natural science. His writing promoted German ethnonationalism, antisemitism, and scientific ...
, the author of a number of 'philosophic' tracts which later became required Nazi reading. Chamberlain married Wagner's daughter, Eva. After the deaths of Cosima and Siegfried Wagner in 1930, the operation of the Festival fell to Siegfried's widow, English-born
Winifred, who was a friend of
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
. The latter was a fanatical admirer of Wagner's music and sought to incorporate it into his heroic mythology of the German nation. Hitler held many of Wagner's original scores in his
Berlin bunker at the end of World War II, despite the pleadings 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 ...
to have these important documents put in his care; the scores perished with Hitler in the final days of the war.
Many scholars have argued that Wagner's views, particularly his antisemitism and purported Aryan-Germanic racism, influenced the Nazis. These claims are disputed. Recent studies suggest that there is no evidence that Hitler even read any of Wagner's writings and further argue that Wagner's works do not inherently support Nazi notions of heroism. During the Nazi regime, ''Parsifal'' was denounced as being "ideologically unacceptable" and the opera was not performed at Bayreuth during the war years. It has been suggested that a
de facto
''De facto'' ( ; , "in fact") describes practices that exist in reality, whether or not they are officially recognized by laws or other formal norms. It is commonly used to refer to what happens in practice, in contrast with ''de jure'' ("by la ...
ban had been placed on ''Parsifal'' by the Nazis; however there were 23 performances at the
Deutsche Oper Berlin
The Deutsche Oper Berlin is a German opera company located in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin. The resident building is the country's second largest opera house (after Munich's) and also home to the Berlin State Ballet.
Since 2004, the D ...
, between 1939 and 1942, which suggests that no formal ban was in place.
The Nazi fascination with Wagner was largely inspired by Hitler, sometimes to the dismay of other high-ranking Nazi officials, including
Joseph Goebbels. In 1933, for instance, Hitler ordered that each
Nuremberg Rally
The Nuremberg Rallies (officially ', meaning ''Reich Party Congress'') refer to a series of celebratory events coordinated by the Nazi Party in Germany. The first rally held took place in 1923. This rally was not particularly large or impactful; ...
open with a performance of the overture from ''
Rienzi
' (''Rienzi, the last of the tribunes''; WWV 49) is an early opera by Richard Wagner in five acts, with the libretto written by the composer after Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel of the same name (1835). The title is commonly shortened to ''Rie ...
''. He also issued one thousand free tickets for an annual Bayreuth performance of ''Meistersinger'' to Nazi functionaries. When Hitler entered the theater, however, he discovered that it was almost empty. The following year, those functionaries were ordered to attend, but they could be seen dozing off during the performance, so that in 1935, Hitler conceded and released the tickets to the public.
In general, while Wagner's music was often performed during the
Third Reich
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
, his popularity actually declined in Germany in favor of Italian composers such as
Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (; 9 or 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian composer best known for his operas. He was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, receiving a musical education with the h ...
and
Puccini
Giacomo Puccini ( Lucca, 22 December 1858Bruxelles, 29 November 1924) was an Italian composer known primarily for his operas. Regarded as the greatest and most successful proponent of Italian opera after Verdi, he was descended from a long ...
. By the 1938–39 season, Wagner had only one opera in the list of fifteen most popular operas of the season, with the list headed by Italian composer
Ruggero Leoncavallo
Ruggero (or Ruggiero) Leoncavallo ( , , ; 23 April 18579 August 1919) was an Italian opera composer and librettist. Although he produced numerous operas and other songs throughout his career it is his opera '' Pagliacci'' (1892) that remained h ...
's ''
Pagliacci''. Ironically, according to
Albert Speer, the
Berlin Philharmonic
The Berlin Philharmonic (german: Berliner Philharmoniker, links=no, italic=no) is a German orchestra based in Berlin. It is one of the most popular, acclaimed and well-respected orchestras in the world.
History
The Berlin Philharmonic was fo ...
Orchestra's last performance before their evacuation from Berlin at the end of World War II was of Brünnhilde's immolation scene at the end of ''
Götterdämmerung
' (; ''Twilight of the Gods''), WWV 86D, is the last in Richard Wagner's cycle of four music dramas titled (''The Ring of the Nibelung'', or ''The Ring Cycle'' or ''The Ring'' for short). It received its premiere at the on 17 August 1876, as ...
''.
As part of the regime's propaganda intentions of 'Nazifying' German culture, specific attempts were made to appropriate Wagner's music as 'Nazi' and pseudo-academic articles appeared such as Paul Bülow's "Adolf Hitler and the
Bayreuth Ideological Circle" (''Zeitschrift für Musik'', July 1933). Such articles were Nazi attempts to rewrite history to demonstrate that Hitler was integral to German culture.
There is evidence that music of Wagner was used at the
Dachau concentration camp in 1933/34 to 'reeducate'
political prisoner
A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention.
There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although n ...
s by exposure to 'national music'. However, there seems to be no documentation to support claims sometimes made that his music was played at
Nazi death camps
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...
.
Wagner's music in Israel
Wagner's operas have never been staged in the modern
State of Israel, and the few public instrumental performances that have occurred have provoked much controversy.
Despite Wagner's known writings against Jews, there was no opposition to his music in the early
Zionist
Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after '' Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Je ...
movement and its founders;
Theodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl; hu, Herzl Tivadar; Hebrew name given at his brit milah: Binyamin Ze'ev (2 May 1860 – 3 July 1904) was an Austro-Hungarian Jewish lawyer, journalist, playwright, political activist, and writer who was the father of modern po ...
, the founder of Zionism, was an avid admirer of Wagner's music. The Palestine Orchestra, founded in 1936 by
Bronisław Huberman
Bronisław Huberman (19 December 1882 – 16 June 1947) was a Polish violinist. He was known for his individualistic interpretations and was praised for his tone color, expressiveness, and flexibility. The '' Gibson ex-Huberman Stradivarius'' ...
in what is now the state of Israel (and which became the
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (abbreviation IPO; Hebrew: התזמורת הפילהרמונית הישראלית, ''ha-Tizmoret ha-Filharmonit ha-Yisra'elit'') is an Israeli symphony orchestra based in Tel Aviv. Its principal concert venue ...
), 'during its first two years ... programme
several works by Richard Wagner who was recognised as one of the great Western composers despite the well-known fact that he had been a fanatical anti-Semite'. However the orchestra banished his works from its repertoire after
Kristallnacht
() or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (german: Novemberpogrome, ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's (SA) paramilitary and (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation fro ...
in 1938 (to be followed shortly after by the exclusion of works of
Richard Strauss).
Although Wagner's works are broadcast on Israeli government-owned radio and television stations, attempts to stage public performances in Israel have raised protests, including protests from
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
survivors. In 1981
Zubin Mehta
Zubin Mehta (born 29 April 1936) is an Indian conductor of Western classical music. He is music director emeritus of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) and conductor emeritus of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Mehta's father was the fou ...
, as an encore at an orchestral concert in Tel-Aviv, played extracts from ''Tristan und Isolde'', after offering those who wished (including two members of the orchestra who had asked to be excused) the opportunity to leave. Despite a few vocal protests, most of the audience stayed to the end of the piece. In 1992,
Daniel Barenboim programmed works by Wagner at a concert of the Israel Philharmonic, but this was cancelled after protests, although a rehearsal was opened to the public. The first documented public Israeli Wagner concerts were in 2000, when the Holocaust survivor
Mendi Rodan Mendi Rodan (Hebrew: מנדי רודן) (born 17 April 1929; died 9 May 2009) was an Israeli conductor and educator.
Biography
Mendi Rodan (Rosenblum) was born in Iaşi, Romania, one of three children of Solomon and Miriam Rosenblum. Mendi began p ...
conducted the ''
Siegfried Idyll'' in
Rishon LeZion, and in August 2001 when
a concert conducted by Barenboim in
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the ...
included as an encore an extract from ''
Tristan und Isolde
''Tristan und Isolde'' (''Tristan and Isolde''), WWV 90, is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the 12th-century romance Tristan and Iseult by Gottfried von Strassburg. It was comp ...
'', which divided the audience between applause and protest. A concert with works by Wagner was announced for 18 June 2012 in Tel Aviv; however these plans were abandoned after protests.
[Harriet Sherwood]
''Tel Aviv Wagner concert cancelled after wave of protest''
''The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', 5 June 2012, accessed 5 June 2012
References
Citations
Sources
* Adorno, Theodor (2005). ''In Search of Wagner.'' Verso .
* Bruen, Hanan (1993). ''Wagner in Israel: A conflict among Aesthetic, Historical, Psychological and Social Considerations'', Journal of Aesthetic Education, vol. 27 no. 1 (Spring 1993), pp. 99–103
* Deathridge, John (1984). ''The New Grove Wagner'', London: Macmillan,
* Deathridge, John (2008). ''Wagner Beyond Good and Evil'', Berkeley.
* Evans, Richard J. (2004). ''The Coming of the Third Reich'', London
* Evans, Richard J. (2005). ''The Third Reich in Power, 1933-1939'', The Penguin Press, .
* Gregor-Dellin, Martin (1983). ''Richard Wagner: his life, his work, his Century.'' William Collins,
* Gutman, Robert (1968, revised 1990). ''Richard Wagner : The Man, His Mind and His Music.'' Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (1990).
* John, Eckhardt (2004). ''La musique dans la système concentrationnaire nazi'', in ''Le troisième Reich et la Musique'', ed. Pascal Huynh, Paris
* Katz, Jacob, (1986). "The Darker side of Genius: Richard Wagner's Anti-Semitism", Brandeis University Press
* Kershaw, Ian, (1998). ''Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris'', London: Penguin.
* Magee, Bryan (2002). ''The Tristan Chord.'' New York: Owl Books. . (UK Title: ''Wagner and Philosophy'', Publisher Penguin Books Ltd, ).
* Millington, Barry (Ed.) (1992). ''The Wagner Compendium: A Guide to Wagner's Life and Music.'' London: Thames and Hudson Ltd. .
* Rose, Paul Lawrence (1992). ''Wagner: Race and Revolution.'' Yale University Press. .
* Sheffi, Na'ama, tr. M. Grenzeback and M. Talisman (2013). ''The Ring of Myths: The Israelis, Wagner and the Nazis.'' Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press. .
* Spencer, Stewart (2004). " ''"Er starb, - ein mensch wie alle"'': Wagner and Carrie Pringle", in ''Wagner'' vol. 25 no. 2.
* Spotts, Frederick, (1999). ''Bayreuth: A History of the Wagner Festival''. Yale University Press .
* Teachout, Terry (2009). "Why Israel Still Shuts Wagner Out," ''
Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'', W1, 31 January – 1 February 2009
* Wagner, Richard. ''Mein Leben.'' (''My Life'') vol 1 available online at Project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5197.
* Wagner, Richard. ''Judaism in Music''
on-line text* Weiner, Marc A (1998). ''Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination'', Lincoln and London.
External links
The Wagner Library* Uzan, Elad (2012).
Wagner and Hitler: Active or passive influence? (The Jerusalem Post Magazine)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wagner Controversies
Antisemitism in Germany
Race-related controversies in opera
Race-related controversies in music
Wagner studies