The German composer Richard Wagner was a controversial figure during his lifetime, and has continued to be so after his death.Millington, Barry (Ed.) (1992). Even today he is associated in the minds of many with Nazism and his operas are often thought to extol the virtues of German nationalism. The writer and Wagner scholar Bryan Magee 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.Magee, Bryan (2002).
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.Many of Wagner's writings are available online in English translations at The Wagner Library. Several of his writings have achieved some notoriety, in particular, his essay Das Judenthum in der Musik (Judaism 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'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, 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 followed an argument with his wife Cosima over the singer Carrie Pringle, with whom some claim he had an amorous relationship.
Paternity
Richard Wagner was born on 22 May 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 six months after Richard's birth, by which time Wagner's mother was living with the actor and playwright Ludwig Geyer 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.Magee, Bryan (2002) pages 358 - 361.Gutman, Robert (1968, revised 1990) page 4. 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.Deathridge (1984), p. 1 The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche 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 surname among Jews 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
According to Wagner scholar Stewart Spencer, the frequent allegation that Wagner had an affair with the singer Carrie Pringle, and that an argument about this affair with his wife Cosima precipitated Wagner's fatal heart attack is an invention, for which there is no first-hand or documentary evidence.Spencer (2004).
Antisemitism Prior to 1850 (when he was 37), there is no record of Wagner expressing any particular antisemitic sentiment.Katz, Jacob, (1986) 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. In a previous issue, music critic Theodor Uhlig had attacked the success in Paris of Meyerbeer's Le prophète (1849), 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, particularly 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 — going under!" Some commentators have taken this to mean actual physical annihilation. Wagner advises Jews to follow the example of Jewish convert to Protestantism Ludwig Börne 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").Wagner, R. Judaism in Music , note 37
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".Selected Letters, ed. Millington and Spencer: letter of 18 April 1851, pp. 221–2 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'Collins German Dictionary, London, 1988) as meaning that Wagner wished the Jewish people to be destroyed.Teachout, (2009).
Some biographers, such as Theodor Adorno and Robert Gutman,Gutman, Robert (1968, revised 1990). 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, and Sixtus Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger are supposedly Jewish stereotypes. However, 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.See, however, Weiner (1997) for very detailed allegations of antisemitism in Wagner's music and characterisations
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 art: "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) representations of Jewishness, were not seen as such by Wagner himself, as evidence found in Cosima's diaries shows. 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 Lieban) 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, a practising Jew and son of a rabbi, whose talent was freely acknowledged by Wagner. Levi's position as Kapellmeister at Munich meant he was to conduct the premiere of Parsifal, Wagner's last opera. Wagner initially objected to this and was quoted as saying 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.Gutman (1990) pages 418ff However the influence of Gobineau on Wagner's thought is debated.Gregor-Dellin, Martin (1983) pages 468,487. 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, the opera most often accused of containing racist ideology. Although Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races was written 25 years earlier, it seems that Wagner did not read it until October 1880 (although the phrase “Entartet Geschlecht” at the start of Tristan und Isolde suggests awareness of the essay's concepts soon after its initial publication).Gutman (1990) page 406 There is evidence to suggest that Wagner was very interested in Gobineau's idea that Western society was doomed because of miscegenation 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".
Wagner's conversations with Gobineau during the philosopher's 5-week stay at Wahnfried 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.Gutman (1990) page 419
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.