Wagner a Anti-semite/nazi???

[ruudp]

Don't take this as a personal attack chassz.
more as a innocent question..
I've heard various stories regarding wagner treating him as a STRONG anti-semite who thought he was the most GERMAN of man.
He was reputed to burst in a rage if he had to eat with jews and composed music some found anti-semitic.Also the nazi's abused and RAPED his music in a ghastling way propagandizing THEIR ideas trough his music..Although this is a beethoven forum *my number one aswell* I'd still like to know what's true about these stories should any of you know...

Regards,
Ruud

[Beyond Within]

I dont know about Wagner, the only time I heard that he was anti-semitic, was from a jew on the radio. He was like "although Wagner was a detestible human being, full
of anti semitism, he is a very important musician...I personally dont like his music". Something like that.

To me its hard to hate someone I have never met, but thats just me...As for the Nazis...Hitler, during the period when he
lived in Vienna (as a struggling artist), would see Wagner opera obsessively. He would drag his friend Kubizek with him to see the Ring Cycles and Tristan and
Isolde dozens of times over and over. He would go into long tirades about the perfection of Wagners music and librettos. He even spent a large chunk of the little
money he had on a fancy piano. He would demand of Kubizek to play the overtures for him. Hitler even 'pecked out' his own opera and had Kubizek (a musician) arrange it properly on staff paper. He obsessed over
this opera of his for months, then abandoned it for no reason. His passion for Wagner never left him. Whenever he was depressed over a political issue, or had doubts him himself his friend Hansfraegl would play Wagner and instantly Hitler would jump around in joy, singing along every note flawlessly. When he became Fuerer he still
saw a lot of Wagner opera, and in fact became friends with his son and wife. Part of the image Hitlers propoganda machine cultivated in Hitler was that he was
a major patron of the arts. But this was in fact true. He spend a lot of his own money (from the sales of Mein Kampf) to keep the productions as lavish as possible. Using government funding he had Albert Speer and other architects raise and restore many opera houses. The obsession with Wagner was mostly confined to him and Joseph Goebbels (propoganda minister for the Reich). Goebbels was a piano player and loved to play Wagner... Hitler would invite all of his adjutants to spectacular performances (not just of Wagner, but of the Berlin
Philharmonic playing Beethoven, Mozart, Bruckner, ect.). Most of them never showed up, making Hitler furious. As an artist himself he declared that its frustrating
for a brilliant performance to be played to a unenthusiastic or empty crowd. So he then made these performances public, so that the performers would have a respectful audience. In all of Hitlers rantings he just talks about the perfection of Wagners music. He had a vast music collection, but according to Albert speer only listened to Wagner. Anyway, I think the whole Wagner/Nazism was confined to a personal affinity of Hitlers.

[sean82uk]

I have just read 'The Lives Of The Great Composers' and Wagner it claims was a big anti-semmite, he tryed to force one of his Jewish conducters in a Christian Baptisim and belived in the supremecy of the Nordic race.
He also comes across a horrid man with a huge ego.

Hitler once said something like: ''Anyone who wants to understand National Socialism needs to understand Wagner''
Hitler visited Wagners home and met Wagners ancestors.

[Peter]

Originally posted by sean82uk:
I have just read 'The Lives Of The Great Composers' and Wagner it claims was a big anti-semmite, he tryed to force one of his Jewish conducters in a Christian Baptisim and belived in the supremecy of the Nordic race.
He also comes across a horrid man with a huge ego.

Hitler once said something like: ''Anyone who wants to understand National Socialism needs to understand Wagner''
Hitler visited Wagners home and met Wagners ancestors.

Yes, but the Nazis and Hitler cannot be blamed on Wagner who died 50 years before those events! Antisemetism was rife in Europe in the 19th century, Mahler for example only obtained the post of director at the Vienna opera by converting to christianity. Wagner's part rests on the notorious Judaism in music pamphlet of 1850, but in complete contradiction to this he entrusted Hermann Levi (a Jew) with the first performance of the highly christian Parsifal at Bayreuth in 1882.


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'Man know thyself'

[Chaszz]

Adding something to the informative replies above: there is no doubt whatsoever that Wagner was an antisemite of major proportions. "Judiasm in Music", a tract agianst Jews, was published anonymously in Wagner's middle age and as time went on it became generally known that he was the author. Then in about 1868 or so he published it again under his own name, so as to not be seen backing down from his ‘heroic’ stand. On the other hand, Wagner was unlike most composers in writing and publishing many tracts and books on various topics. His output runs to a long shelf of overly-complex tortured prose. Also, as Peter says, he was swimming in a very large school of like-minded fish; antisemitism was rife all over Europe from the latter part of the 1800s thru the Second World War. Only off the top of my head, some other great artists who were notably antisemitic were Chopin, Bruckner, the Russian writer Dostoyevsky, the French painters Degas and Cezanne and the poet T.S. Eliot. Many scholars and cranks published racist and antisemitic theories. Wagner's special eminence as a Jew-hater springs from his prolific pen and the fact that he was a darling of the late 19th C. newspapers; he was an infamous character and he sold copies like almost nobody else. He hated the French as much as the Jews and this sold papers also. He had an illicit love affair with a married woman while lying about it to his benefactor King Ludwig of Bavaria, which didn’t hurt his notoriety.

Of his antisemitism there is no doubt. Is it in his operas? There is a dispute on this. In my mind, the characters Beckmesser in ‘Meistersinger’, Klingsor in ‘Parsifal’ and Alberich, Mime and Hagen in ‘The Ring’ are probably meant as Jews although they are not identified as such. Again on the other hand, he had a good number of Jews in his intellectual and social circle. And he said near the end of his life that he preferred assimilation as an answer to the ‘problem’. And Levi was his favorite conductor.

Was he partly responsible for the Holocaust? Though, as we read above, Hitler loved the music, there is no evidence that he ever read Wagner’s prose writings. By the 1920s these were probably no longer in wide circulation and it is documented that Hitler received his major antisemitic influences from other widely-read writers. Wagner is mentioned only once or twice in passing in Hitler’s major manifesto ‘Mein Kampf”, mainly as a German who stood up for what he believed in, which could mean Wagner’s struggle to get his work performed and/or to get German opera reformed. As said above, the other Nazis mostly were bored by Wagner’s music, though whether this means they preferred other composers or would have rather heard beer-hall music I don’t know (but I think we may guess). The plots of many of the Wagner operas center around the themes that life is tragic and that a man’s life can be redeemed only by the love of a good and noble woman. ‘The Ring’ is based on the idea that love of power is bad and love of people is good. In ‘Parsifal’ there is an influence of Buddhism filtered through the philosophy of Schopenhauer that preaches resignation to life’s difficulties, and the overriding importance of compassion. The composer was planning an opera on the life of Buddha when he died. In one of his prose writings, he warned against Germany assuming power over other nations. All of these ideas are hardly the stuff of Nazi ideology. And as Peter says, Wagner was dead for 40 years by the time of the Nazi rise, and it is unfair to blame a man for something he did not actually do.

Wagner’s son and daughter-in-law welcomed Hitler to Bayreuth from the early 1920s, when he was just beginning his rise. Although the son behaved passively, the daughter-in-law was a dedicated Hitler supporter and may have supplied the paper on which he wrote ‘Mein Kampf’ while in prison after the failed Munich putsch.

Would Wagner have welcomed Hitler? My own opinion is that in his old age, when he studied Buddhism, he MAY have been wise enough to reject the street-brawling demogogue. Again on the other hand, I have a Jewish neighbor who loves music, including Wagner's, and lived through World War II in Paris. Her answer to this question is a simple “Of course!”



[This message has been edited by Chaszz (edited 05-16-2004).]

[AndrewMyers]

I have to be honest and admit that I steered clear of Wagner for years, largely because of the length of his works but also subconsciously because of the Nazi reputation. I only started giving him a proper chance about a year ago - and what a discovery! No turning back now - in fact only yesterday I went to the ENO Valkyrie. I don't think any other opera composer manages to absorb the listener into the story so completely - perhaps it's that very subsuming of the individual ego into the larger force that made his music appeal to the Nazis. But the same criticism could be made of rave culture.

But this topic has made me think about how important extra-musical factors (image, reputation, biography, associations) are in determining most people's musical tastes. How many people do genuinely judge composers/ bands in purely musical terms?

Poor Wagner though. I'm sure he wouldn't have approved of genocide. Anyway, personally I can't find any objectionable political subtext in Tristan or the Ring. If I am missing something, please don't point it out to me, I'm enjoying the music too much! (Maybe that makes me politically irresponsible...)

[Chaszz]

Originally posted by AndrewMyers:
I have to be honest and admit that I steered clear of Wagner for years, largely because of the length of his works but also subconsciously because of the Nazi reputation. I only started giving him a proper chance about a year ago - and what a discovery! No turning back now - in fact only yesterday I went to the ENO Valkyrie. I don't think any other opera composer manages to absorb the listener into the story so completely - perhaps it's that very subsuming of the individual ego into the larger force that made his music appeal to the Nazis. But the same criticism could be made of rave culture.

But this topic has made me think about how important extra-musical factors (image, reputation, biography, associations) are in determining most people's musical tastes. How many people do genuinely judge composers/ bands in purely musical terms?

Poor Wagner though. I'm sure he wouldn't have approved of genocide. Anyway, personally I can't find any objectionable political subtext in Tristan or the Ring. If I am missing something, please don't point it out to me, I'm enjoying the music too much! (Maybe that makes me politically irresponsible...)

Glad to see one more person with the Wagner illness on the board. Seriously, I don't think there's any Jewish subtext to 'Tristan.' In 'The Ring', if one is to believe the accusation of the caricaturing of Jews there (which is in dispute) the essence of it is: Alberich the dwarf covets love from the Rhine Maidens but cannot possess it. He then forswears love, which action enables him to steal the magical Rhine gold which in turn gives him power over all creation. (Only someone who voluntarily renounces love can steal the magic gold.) Jews were often described in Europe as scheming, money- and power-grubbing dwarf-like creatures. Alberich makes a ring of power from the gold and rules the land of the dwarfs, in preparation for his eventual overthrow of the gods and rule of the entire world.

When a dragon later comes to own the ring, Alberich's brother Mime covets it. Notice that 'Mime' (pronounced 'meem-a') means an actor, and one of the strands of W's published antisemitism was that Jews did not have the essence of true culture, but could only act or pretend to have it. Mime secretly raises the half-god,half-human orphan Siegfried, a hero whom it is prophesied will be able to kill the dragon and get hold of the ring.

After Siegfried does so, he learns that Mime plans to kill him and steal the ring, so he kills Mime first. In the meantime Alberich has somehow managed to get a human queen pregnant, and the resulting son, Hagen, may be seen as a half-Jew. When Hagen grows up, he and Alberich conspire to get back the ring. Hagen kills Siegfried by stabbing him in the back, but does not manage to survive himself. In the end the ring goes back to the Rhinemaidens where it belongs. This is a short summary leaving out everything in the plot which doesn't relate to the presumed Jewish caricatures. There are many other plot features which take much of the guilt away from the presumptive Jews. In particular, the ring is cursed, so that everyone who owns it will die, and several 'non-Jewish' characters do. Obviously meaning that whoever gives up love for power is wrong.

It can be seen that if Siegfried represents the noble, free German character (and in his harsh words and 'naturally moral' energetic actions he does bear an uncanny resemblance to both the not-yet-born Superman of Nietzsche and the not-yet-born Nazi 'hero'); then if Hagen is half-Jewish, the Jews are stabbing the Germans in the back. (Another uncanny parallel with Hitler's not-yet-born obsession with the 'stab in the back' by which the Jews supposedly betrayed Germany by scheming to make it lose World War I).

One more uncanny parallel: Hitler in his bunker is often seen as the god Wotan who at the end of the Ring, in 'Gotterdammerung' dies for his immoral actions. Hitler's resolve for all Germany to die with him, because it was not strong enough to assume its destiny, is seen as a parallel to the burning of all the gods, with Wotan, in the destruction of Valhalla at the cycle's end.

(If I were not an agnostic/atheist, I would be tempted to believe that God or Providence or Fate was paying Wagner back for his sins by having Hitler live out in an uncanny way the plot of 'The Ring', and thus underlining Wagner's reputation as
a proto-Nazi in a way that cannot be fixed, unjustified though it may be.)

Should you be interested in the presumed Jewish characters in 'Meistersinger' and 'Parsifal', perhaps you can write email to me privately so we don't further try the patience of the Beethoven group.

Chaszz



[This message has been edited by Chaszz (edited 05-16-2004).]

[Keith]

Chaszz's posts on Wagner are most fascinating and informative as ever.
May I add just a few of my thoughts here.

Whether Wagner would have welcomed the rise of the Nazi Party is an extremely difficult question.
It is known of course that Wagner became more and more socially conservative as he got older, but on the other hand I think he would have despised the weakness of the Weimar Republic.
I have always been a bit unsure whether Wagner would have welcomed the 'Superman' a'la Neitzsche because I have a feeling that Wagner was dead before Neitzsche developed this idea and anyway they had split up long-since.
Finally, it may come down to a simple point that the overbearing arrogance of Wagner would have bridled at submitting to an even more monstrous ego, ie. that of Hitler!

K.

[This message has been edited by Keith (edited 05-17-2004).]

[Chaszz]

Originally posted by Keith:

Whether Wagner would have welcomed the rise of the Nazi Party is an extremely difficult question...Finally, it may come down to a simple point that the overbearing arrogance of Wagner would have bridled at submitting to an even more monstrous ego, ie. that of Hitler!

K.

An interesting point that I've never seen mentioned anywhere.

Chaszz

[Chaszz]

Originally posted by Keith:

Whether Wagner would have welcomed the rise of the Nazi Party is an extremely difficult question...Finally, it may come down to a simple point that the overbearing arrogance of Wagner would have bridled at submitting to an even more monstrous ego, ie. that of Hitler!

K.

An interesting point that I've never seen mentioned anywhere.

Chaszz

[Keith]

An interesting point came to me on the train this morning going to work was that Wagner's political career was a path from rebellion to social conservatism, where as Hitler's was the other way around, ie. he started very early on as a revolutionary, posed as a conservative in order to gain power through democratic means, and then as the sky fell in on him at the end of the war reverted to a primeval revolutionary or nihilistic figure urging his few remaing followers to ever and greater and mad acts of destruction and sacrifice. It is possible Wagner could have been taken in by Hitler at least at the start. But I somehow suspect there would have been a parting of the ways at some point, if only because of their gigantic egos.

[JamesRAllred]

How did Hitler meet Wagner's ansesters???? Which ones did he meet, grand perents, great grand perents, who?

Or were his DECENDENTS ment, like children?

james

[Beyond Within]

Hitler was friends with Wagners wife and son. I am not sure how he met them though...I think this happened after he took power.

[Steppenwolf]

Chassz has answered this question well. But let me add this - if you are really interested in the question of Wagner's antisemitism, read 'Wagner and Philosophy' by Brian Magee, especially the chapter specifically dealing with the anti-semitism. That will answer all your questions.

One brief comment regarding the supposed anti-semitism in his operas ... well, if you WANT to find it in them, then you will find it in them. The approach to detecting anti-semetism in Wagner's operas adopts methods similar to those once employed by the Spanish Inquisition in detecting heresy. If you really want to find it, and you use your imagination, you will find it.

[Peter]

Originally posted by Beyond Within:
Hitler was friends with Wagners wife and son. I am not sure how he met them though...I think this happened after he took power.

Cosima Wagner (the composer's wife) died in 1930 before Hitler came to power, having spent the last 10 years of her life totally blind. Siegfried Wagner (the composer's son) also died in 1930, it was his wife Winifred Williams Klindworth (1897-1980) who was in charge of bayreuth during the third reich and she was on friendly terms with Hitler.

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'Man know thyself'