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Suggestion of three corrections

Hi. First, I'd like to commend the Wikipedia project, and the method of refining texts by debate. And in particular, though I'm going to suggest three corrections to the Wagner entry, I'd like to commend the work of the people who put it together.

Also, I can see from these pages that the Wagner debate can get heated. I hope not to add to the heat, but I do have three corrections.

This is going to take more words than I'd like. But that's because I'm not just going to claim things based on authority, but cite the relevant evidence and indicate where you people can check things for themselves.

• First correction

First, the words claiming, "Wagner consistently argued for the expulsion of Jews", contain an error. To correct, simply delete the word "consistently" and substitute the word "never".

More seriously, to preserve the sort of balance you're after while being accurate, I'd suggest the following re-working.

[Begin] Despite Wagner's many offensive antisemitic remarks, he consistently called for Jews and Germans to assimilate. In his antisemitic essay _Das Judenthum in Musik_ (1850), he described that assimilation in terms of Jews abandoning their cultural, linguistic and religious heritage, which he said was an act of great self-sacrifice, indeed, a kind of self-destruction. That was the meaning of the conclusion of _Das Judenthum_: "Without a backward glance, take part in this work of redemption through self-denial, for then we shall be one and indivisible! But remember, only one thing can redeem you from the burden of your curse: the redemption of Ahasuerus – going under!"

People who claim that Wagner meant physical annihilation generally only quote the last sentence, though the immediately preceding words, "for then we [Jews and Germans] shall be one and indivisible", make it plain that Wagner meant coexistence. Wagner's allusion to Ahasuerus was a reference to the legend of the Wandering Jew, cursed forever to wander among other peoples and cultures and never to belong; the proposed redemption was for Jews to abandon their separate culture, language and religion ("going under") and become "one and indivisible" with the mainstream culture in which they lived.

Later, in a 1878 conversation with Cosima, he mentioned that "if I wrote about the Jews again, I would say that there is nothing to be held against them, only they came to us Germans too soon; we were not stable enough to absorb this element." [end: back to existing text]

First correction: background information

In "Das Judenthum in Musik", probably best translated as "The Jews in Music", Wagner said that Jews should abandon their separate culture, religion, speech (the phrase "the cold indifference of its peculiar blabber" was an offensive reference to Yiddish), and merge with the mainstream of the cultures in which they lived. He said this assimilation involved self-sacrifice, even a form of self-destruction, but great rewards: if Jews assimilated into German culture and life, "we shall then be one and indivisible."

This is to clarify what Wagner's point of view was, not defend it. Wagner's attitude in 1850 was the rough equivalent of people in the US, Europe or Australia today who get annoyed when they see signs in Arabic, and object when Muslim immigrants seek planning permission to build a mosque, and who sound off in newspapers or talk-back radio that Muslims should dress the same as everyone else, learn to speak "proper English", and give up their weird religion. Wagner was in this respect a bigot, as many people are today. But "bigot" is a long way from being a Nazi or proto-Nazi: those people, like Wagner, are wrong but they are not monsters.

Wagner was certainly consistent about assimilation. He called for Jews to assimilate into German culture in 1850 with the first publication of "The Jews in Music", then again in 1869 with the reprint, and then again in 1881 with "Know Thyself". That would be consistent.

So where does the claim that Wagner "consistently called for expulsion" come from?

I'd guess two places. First, Cosima Wagner's _Diary_ entry for 11 October 1878 begins: "I read a very good speech by the preacher Stoecker about the Jews. R.[ichard] is in favour of expelling them entirely." That's an ugly thing for Wagner to have said, but there are three things that need to be noted about that.

First, it's not a "call", which is by definition a public statement, but a man sounding off in private to his wife, who happened to write it in her diary.

Second, at that moment, Wagner was not just a husband in private, he was also to some extent a husband on the spot. Cosima Wagner was far more antisemitic than Richard, and she had just read him a speech by a leading antisemitic agitator, which she thought was "very good". In response Wagner, who was due to disappear into his room to work, could have an argument, or he could say, "Quite right, chuck 'em out."

That's not just making excuses. We know that Wagner actually thought Stoecker was a clown. He described Stoecker's political projects as "sad and comical" (_Diaries_, 28 September, 1881), and "absurdity" (_Diaries_, 7 October 1881). And the next time Wagner encountered an antisemitic speech by Stoecker, attacking "the Jews" over recent stock market scandals, Wagner's response was to defend Jews, not antisemites: 'Another speech by the preacher Stoecker provokes from R.[ichard] the exclamation, "Oh, it is not the Jews – everybody tries to further his own interests – it is we ourselves who are to blame; we, the nation, for allowing such things to happen."' (_Diaries_, 13 November 1879.)

Third, we know that Wagner didn't support expulsion. That's partly because of his extensive network of Jewish friends, colleagues, also lovers, and partly because his public calls for assimilation were echoed by his private remarks.

In short, the 11 October 1878 remark should be acknowledged as an ugly thing for Wagner to be capable of saying, regardless of circumstances, but it should not be pulled from context and put up as if it represented Wagner's actual considered opinion, let alone something that he had advocated in public.

But I suspect that the claim that "Wagner consistently called for the expulsion of Jews" is mainly the product of an interesting series of steps, arising from the following passage from Wagner's introduction to the 1869 reprint of "The Jews in Music":

"One thing is clear to me: the influence that the Jews have gained on our mental life - which you can see in the way our highest cultural directions have been diverted and falsified - this influence is no mere physiological accident, and we must admit that it is real and indisputable. I cannot decide whether our cultural decadence could be halted by vigorously jettisoning that destructive foreign element, since I do not know that any powers exist that would be capable of doing that. If, instead, this element is assimilated with us in such a way that, together with us, it ripens toward a higher development of our nobler human qualities, then clearly the only thing that will help is not to veil the difficulties of this assimilation, but to clearly reveal them."

That's my translation, not the better-known version by WA Ellis, the notoriously incompetent translator of Wagner's prose. Unlike Ellis, I've tried to produce reasonably natural English while keeping Wagner's sense. I've given Wagner's word "gewaltsam" as "vigorous[ly]". Ellis chose "violent", which is not one of the first meanings given in most German dictionaries. Similarly, Ellis translated "Auswerfung" as "ejection", which has in turn been interpreted to mean "expulsion", in the sense of "expulsion of people from a country". But the German word for that sort of expulsion is "Ausweisung", or "Vertreibung". Wagner's word, "Auswerfung", has a cluster of meanings related to throwing things away, also casting nets, fishing lines and other boat-y things, though it can also refer to vomiting, volcanic eruption, or coughing up fur balls, etc. I've chosen "jettisoning" as an English word with a reasonably close set of nuances.

The passage is not a call for the expulsion of the Jews from Germany.

First, the topic of Wagner's paragraph is "the influence that the Jews have gained on our mental life", not "Jews". Wagner was writing about what he thought were Jewish approaches to composing and consuming music. For example, a few paragraphs earlier Wagner had accused Robert Schumann, who was not Jewish (Schumann was in fact antisemitic), of being influenced by supposed Jewish modes of thought. The phrase "vigorous jettisoning" refers to a supposed cultural influence, not people. In fact Wagner would argue that Jews could and should "vigorously jettison" that influence, just as Germans should.

This is the most natural reading of what Wagner wrote, taking the whole passage into consideration and not just hauling a few words out of context and putting the worst possible spin on them.

Second, regardless of what you take "jettisoning" to mean, it is clear that Wagner did not call for it. In the single sentence he devoted to the topic he said he didn't know if it could be done, and he wasn't aware of any power that could do it. He then moved on to the alternative, assimilation, which he described it in glowing terms: for Jews and Germans together assimilation can lead to "a higher development of our nobler human qualities."

So: Wagner spent one sentence on the topic of jettisoning Jewish influence on our mental life, said he didn't know if it could even be done and couldn't think of anything that could do it. He immediately moved on to an alternative that he described in enthusiastic terms. It's fair to say that this amounts to "dismissing" the idea.

How did we get from Wagner briefly mentioning but not supporting the idea of jettisoning "Jewish influence on mental life", to a claim that Wagner not only called for expulsion of Jews but did so all the time, "consistently"?

My guess is that the first steps in this process can be found in Paul Rose's book, _Wagner, Race and Revolution_. Rose started by using Ellis's translation, "violent ejection", and simply assuming that this meant physical expulsion of the Jews from Germany, though Wagner's word choice and the context suggest otherwise. Rose's next step was to note that, in mentioning and dismissing the topic in a single sentence, Wagner said only that it seemed impracticable, and did not discuss the morality of it. Therefore Wagner didn't explicitly say expulsion would be an evil thing, and so it follows, Rose concluded, that Wagner must have really secretly supported it. That's an interestingly athletic series of logical leaps, not based on what Wagner said but on things that he didn't say. Rose's book is full of that sort of thing.

The next steps involve someone reading Rose's book, and finding Rose's slightly stretched version of what Wagner said. That person added more stretching, so that Rose's idea that Wagner secretly supported expulsion was expanded into a claim that Wagner had actually called for expulsion. And then that got expanded a little further, into a claim that Wagner called for expulsion over and over again, "consistently".

So a single sentence about cultural influence, not Jews per se, that dismissed the idea that people could jettison that influence, is morphed by stages into a sustained public campaign for Jews to be expelled from Germany. That's how these things work; it can be a fascinating process.

• Second correction

The second correction concerns these words:

"Hitler himself was a fan of Wagner, drawn to Wagner's anti-Semitism as well as the German themes in his works."

This claim (except for the bit about Hitler being a Wagner fan) is not developed or stretched from any source. It's pure invention, made up by someone who thought it ought to be true. Such evidence as there is goes the other way.

An accurate passage would go like this:

[begin] "Hitler himself was a fan of Wagner's music, and probably found Wagner's imaginary worlds of gods, dragons and lonely outsiders who did great deeds an attractive place to daydream, like his other favourite fantasy-world, the westerns of Karl May. However Hitler never even mentioned any of Wagner's ideas, let alone showed interest in them, not even Wagner's antisemitism. Certainly key Wagnerian ideas like Wagner's pacifism and opposition to military expenditure, Wagner's denial that there was such a thing as a German race, Wagner's stated opposition to "the rule of one race by another", Wagner's calls for assimilation under a Christian worldview, and Wagner's strong pro-Americanism, could hardly have appealed to Hitler, if he had ever been aware of them." [end]

Second correction: background

Note that the proposed replacement paragraph doesn't refer to "the German themes in Wagner's works". You can keep those words if you like, but it's worth noting that of the mature Wagner operas, _Fliegende Holländer_ involves a Dutchman landing in Norway, _Tannhäuser_ is set before such a place or even idea as Germany existed, _Lohengrin_ involves a Spaniard arriving in what is now Belgium, the _Ring_ is based on Scandinavian myths, _Tristan und Isolde_ is about an Irishwoman and a Cornishman, and _Parsifal_ is set in Spain. Only _Meistersinger_ has what you could reasonably call German cultural content, though it too was set before Germany existed.

But that's a side-issue. My main point is that Hitler showed no interest at all in Wagner's ideas, not even his antisemitism.

Hitler's complete disinterest in Wagner's ideas is demonstrated by the primary Hitler sources: _Mein Kampf_, including the posthumously published volume, collected Hitler speeches, _Hitler's Tabletalk_, etc, plus his remarks recorded in diaries or reminiscences by approximately reliable sources (eg Goebbels, Speer, or Ludecke with a grain of salt, say, but not, say, Rauschning or Kubizek). Check "Wagner, Richard" in the indexes, or skim through those books without indexes, and you will find Hitler praising Wagner's music, saying Wagner had to overcome huge obstacles to achieve his vision, saying that Wagner was modest (!), saying that Wagner had a taste for silks and satins, saying that Wagner was a pederast but that's no reason not to listen to his music, and so on. But you will not find Hitler ever mentioning an idea of Wagner's, not even his antisemitism.

People who have read claims, in secondary and tertiary sources, that Wagner influenced Hitler's ideas may find the evidence of the primary sources surprising. But it's not really surprising that Hitler never talked about Wagner's attitude towards Jews. Wagner made nasty antisemitic remarks, but he also surrounded himself with Jewish friends and colleagues, had Jewish lovers, and called for German and Jewish people to become "one and indivisible". It seems likely that Hitler would have found this something of an embarrassment. But whether or not Hitler's failure to mention Wagner's ideas about Jews is an embarrassed silence, it is most certainly a silence.

It may be worth pointing out that Hitler really did nominate a great German cultural figure as a precursor and example for his antisemitism. In the passage in _Mein Kampf_ where Hitler explained the origins of his antisemitism, he cited Goethe as the example of German greatness that he claimed to have contrasted with the Jews he met in Vienna. In a later passage in _Mein Kampf_ Hitler directly cited Goethe as an antisemitic predecessor who, like Hitler, had opposed intermarriage between Jews and Germans. However while Hitler's words have been obsessively scoured for references to Wagner, Hitler's perfectly plain statements point, rather embarrassingly, at the wrong long-dead German. So they have been ignored.

I am absolutely not suggesting that people should now begin reviling Goethe and searching his works, diaries and notebooks, and the memoirs of his friends, to find antisemitic remarks (they are there, including in _Faust_). I'm only suggesting that there's an element of inconsistency, which could be ascribed to scapegoating, hypocrisy, or simply ignorance, in the singling out of Wagner in this context.

• Third correction

The third correction is to these words: He once stated that "there is only one legitimate predecessor to national socialism: Wagner".

Or not. The quote marks indicate a direct citation of Hitler's own words, but Hitler never said this. This "quotation" has an interesting history, as it's not merely a fake, but actually a fake of a fake, as I'll discuss below.

The best approach would be to take out the faked quotation, and to say something like this:

"The Nazis liked to lay claim to the great German cultural tradition, and to associate themselves with the poetry of Goethe and Schiller, the philosophy of Kant and Nietzsche, the music of Bruckner, Beethoven and Wagner, and so on. The music of all three composers, was played at rallies, while Liszt's "Les Preludes" was a sort of signature tune for Nazi radio broadcasts. However it should be remembered that the great bulk of the music played at Nazi rallies and other events, and on the Nazi-controlled radio networks, was not great music of any kind, but kitsch: sentimental songs, dance music, and brass bands. That was the true soundtrack of Nazism."

Third correction: background

The origin of this faked Hitler quote appears to be a phrase that occurred in the book _Hitler Speaks_, attributed to Hermann Rauschning but wholly or partially ghostwritten by Emery Reeves. Rauschning/Reeves' 1939 book claimed to be verbatim records of Rauschning's supposed many conversations with Hitler in the early 1930s, and was a best seller that was cited by many historians in the 1950s and 1960s. The book was later revealed to be a hoax, a compendium of text copied from Hitler's speeches, plus bits and pieces cut and pasted from other sources (Nietzsche, not surprisingly, but also ideas taken from stories by Dostoevsky and Maupassant, etc, which is more surprising), plus free invention, all stuffed into Hitler's mouth. This was necessary because Rauschning, as it turned out, had not actually been a confidant of Hitler's.

However _Hitler Speaks_ was an entertaining and quotable work of fiction, and certain bits and pieces from it still get quoted at second and third hand, thus living on despite the discrediting of the original source. One of these bits is the alleged Hitlerian remark, "I acknowledge only one forerunner: Richard Wagner."

Now, Rauschning/Reeves were not making their Hitler figure claim Wagner as an ideological ancestor of Nazism. Instead their Hitler character was saying that he thought that Wagner had had an original vision and the strength of character to struggle against obstacles and win through, and that Hitler thought he was the same sort of person. (Rauschning/Reeves adapted this idea from a passage in _Mein Kampf_, in which the real Hitler said something of the sort about Martin Luther, Wagner, and Frederick the Great. The Rauschning/Reeves version left out Luther and Frederick, and added greater emphasis on the supposed resemblance to Hitler.)

So the starting point is a faked Hitler quote from 1939, actually about Hitler's supposed belief that he had the same kind of vision and determination that Wagner had. Sixty-odd years later, the original fake was no longer strong enough, so it became further improved into a quote in which Hitler claimed Wagner as a precursor of the Nazi Party.

Again, this is an interesting example of how myth-making processes work.

I also have a suggestion, but I'm aware of having sent far too many words already, so I'll let that lie for now. Sorry about the length, but the motivation is to provide references, as well as just claims.

Hope this is helpful. I'll be happy to provide further references and so on, as required.

Regards,

Laon

I have recently been doing some reading in preparation for some work on Wagner related articles, so I'm glad to see someone else interested. I would suggest that you be bold and go ahead with the changes - and any others that you might have. I would be interested in hearing the suggestion you mentioned. On the specific points: (1) I am not sufficiently familiar with Wagner's oeuvre to vouch for the statement that he never called for the expulsion of Jews, but you are certainly correct about Das Judenthum in der Musik. I would also suggest that the relevant entry in Cosima's diary be mentioned in the article text. (2) I can't comment on all the details, but in general what you say fits with what I have read. I would be interested in specific references. One question: I have repeatedly read, but have not seen a citation for, the assertion that Wagner's music was played in concentration camps, in particular while sending Jews to gas chambers. Is this true, and where can I read more about the Nazi's use of music? (3) This I am not familiar with at all. Again, I would be interested in references. Thanks for all your comments, and I hope you stick around. Dan Gardner 03:09, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Leon, good research, and fascinating; I am trying to locate the recent book about Hitler in Vienna by a female author who claims most all Wagner performances Hitler attended then were conducted by Gustav Mahler. Hitler is never known to have uttered any criticism of Mahler's handling of the works, on the contrary all reports are how enrapt Hitler was by Mahler's renditions. Thanks again. nobs

_______________________________________________________________

Leon, your erudition is impressive, but you are wrong on a couple of counts:

"Gewaltsam" means "violent" and can never be rendered as 'vigorous'. The closest you are likely to get to a cognate/synonym for vigorous is "gewaltig", as in "gewaltiger Stoß = enormous thrust".

"Auswerfen" means to throw out (Aus=out, werfen=throw). "Auswerfen" is not the same as "Ausweisen = deport", ie the legal removal of (an) individual(s). Your other suggestion, "Vertreibung", is more to the point and could be rendered as "force out". "Vertreibung" is done by one group to another and is typically motivated by a wish to take control of resources (ie the expansion of Europeans in North America, the expansion of Bantus in Africa). Just like the english pair "transfer/chuck out", "Verdrängen/Auswerfen" are typically used by different levels of society. Whereas an educated person speaks of "Verdrängen", "Auswerfen" would typically be something said by a worker.

Another important difference is that "Vertreibung" treats the engendered suffering as a side effect. "Vertreibung" lacks any emotional flavour, neither of regret nor of eagerness to commit harm. "Gewaltsame Auswerfung", on the other hand, is emotionally charged. For someone to speak of "gewaltsame Auswerfung" he has to be very angry. Not only does he accept the cost of suffering in order to effect the removal of the group, but he presupposes the use of violence to effect the removal.

Philopedia

Using Wagner's text to interpret, Gurnemaz says to Parsifal,

"Verrücketer Knabe! Wieder Gewalt?" ussually translated "Insane youth! Violent again?",

hence Gewaltsam meaning violence is probably accurate. Nobs01 17:38, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

In the passage Laon translated, Wagner uses "gewaltsam" as an adverb. While the adjective "gewaltsam" has only one meaning, which is "violent", the more commonly heard meaning of the adverb is something else than violent. That there is no exact word for it in English, and that the word "gewaltsam" is, on the whole, very different from any word in English, are nothing exceptional. Languages are different, not just in appearance and syntax. "Vigorously" is indeed a better translation than "violent". I wouldn't trust German-to-English dictionaries too much. Nor are translations in general, even of classics of world literature, ever without mistakes of this sort, or of worse sort.

I would also like to comment on this: "For someone to speak of 'gewaltsame Auswerfung' he has to be very angry. Not only does he accept the cost of suffering in order to effect the removal of the group, but he presupposes the use of violence to effect the removal."

You are saying that Wagner had to be angry to use this and that, and would have accepted this and that... However, did not Wagner mention the whole thing in passing, in order to get it out of his way and advance onto his actual point, which was the need for the assimilation of the Jews into the German 'mainstream culture'? He did. He did so in the same way as any ontologist would have to mention solipsism, before advancing on to something more reasonable and interesting. Did you not get this? By the way, that there was a need for such an assimilation, subsequent history has extravagantly and violently proved.

Also, why hasn't Laon's contribution to this discussion had any effect on the content of the article? That the man has been gone for almost two years now should not mean that the mistakes in the article should remain there.88.148.199.123 17:40, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

The phrases that Laon objected to have now gone, so I'm not sure to which "mistakes" you refer. The detailed discussion of Wagner's antisemitism has been moved to a separate article: Wagner Controversies.--Dogbertd 08:46, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Biography heading

Would anyone mind if I wrote a condensed version of the Wagner's biography section? It's quite a bit long now. While interesting, perhaps it doesn't provide the emphasis in the key events for the more casual encyclopedia reader? Maybe the fuller version could be a sub article as with Beethoven: "Richard Wagner Biography" or similar? :)

See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Composers for discussion on different ideas on presenting composer articles. --Sketchee 05:05, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)

Last words

His last words were recorded as: "I am fond of them, of the inferior beings of the abyss, of those who are full of longing".

Okay, this I have never heard before. Any references? And what the heck does "inferior beings of the abyss" refer to? -- CYD

I got this info from a book called "Famous Last Words" by Jonathan Green. After you raised the query I checked on the web and found a site giving the same info. Of course that doesn't make it true necessarily. And as to what "the inferior beings of the abyss" means, search me. JackofOz 23:02, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

'appropriation of his music by Nazi Germany'

Text reads:

Anti-Semitism and Nazi appropriation

During the 20th century, the public perception of Wagner increasingly centered on his anti-semitism, largely due to the appropriation of his music by Nazi Germany.

• (a) this is an ambiguous referance. Does this refer to the Nazi regime, or to German society and culture in the Nazi era.

• (b) In either case it will be hard to support with evidence.

Wagner and Wagner's music was long out of popular style by the 1930's when radio and film were catering to then modern tastes. Daphne Wagner, in her book The Wagner's maintains that Hitler's open support for the Bayreuth Festival was largely due to his own personal tastes for Wagner and to protect the theatre and festival from the violent mauraders of Nazi SA which were encouraged by the regime to vigilantism. Hitler's high profile support of Bayreuth served notice to the erratic and uncontrollable Stormtroopers 'hands off' this bastion of high-brow & bourgeouis tastes that the Party otherwise was encouraging youth to harrass.

Adolf Hitler 'appropriated' Wagner & Bayreuth, and perhaps a handful of other Nazi higherups. The vast majority of the population's tastes where in other areas, particularly South American Tango's were prevelant at the time; also American jazz was making inroads.--nobs

• I am not certain the use of the term 'fan' of Wagner or 'fan' of Wagner's music captures the esence of Wagnerians. nobs

• Three questions regarding the following sentence:

After Wagner's death in 1883, Bayreuth became a meeting place for a group of extreme right-wing Wagner fans that came to be known as the Bayreuth circle

1. What is the source? 2. What is the evidence this alleged group was political in nature, that it can be described as 'right wing' 3. Was Arturo Tosconini, et. al. members of this group?

Certainly a 'circle' of friends had been gathering at Bayreuth since its inception, performers, Wagner Verein benefactors, and audiences; that was the purpose of Bayreuth. This predates the date given in the text.nobs

I'm not sure who the 'et al' in 'Toscanini et al' are, but Toscanini was not a member of Bayreuth circle. Indeed, he was a well known anti-fascist. As for the source for this info, it's pretty well known. There are many sources. See the film "The Confessions of Winifrid Wagner." The evidence is from the writings of Wagner's relatives, notably his son-in-law, from Wagner's own known cultivation of Gobineau and others and from Cosima's recorded opinions. What evidence do you have that the SA were encouraged to 'harass' 'high brow and bourgeois taste'? I've never heard of any such encouragement. Some Nazi leaders were thuggish, others were highly cultivated individuals - Goebbels and Rosenberg, for example. Hitler certainly saw himself as a man of taste. Paul B 11:21 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Daphne Wagner, daughter of Wieland Wagner and granddaughter of Winifred Wagner is my source. The Wagner's is the title of her book. .nobs