 |  |
Click for Contents
|
P.O. Box 1805,Jerusalem 91017 Tel. 972-2-531-5440, Fax: 972-2-537-9489 Advertising Fax: 972-2-531-5425, Email Editorial: [email protected] Subscriptions: [email protected] Web site: http://www.jrep.com |
Trying to Kosher Wagner
Paul Lawrence Rose
 EXILED FROM HIS HOME AND PROFESSION: For great-grandson Gottfried, facing up to Wagner's anti-Semitism meant |
Richard Wagner, Adolph Hitler and Bayreuth still form a troubling nexus. More than a century after the mystical-nationalistic German composer�s death, and 54 years after the F�hrer�s demise, Bayreuth, the Bavarian home of the annual Wagnerian opera festival, is still at the center of a debate over the role it and Wagner and his family played in the conception of the Final Solution.
At the root of the Wagner problem is the fact that he and other precursors of Nazism replaced religion with a sacralized politics, which became a powerful, emotion-soaked road to redemption. That opened the gates to fanatical Hitlerite nationalism. Wagner - whose belief that "the Jewish race is the born enemy of pure humanity and all that is noble in man" had led him to the conclusion that "all Jews should be burned at a performance of �Nathan the Wise�" - was a crucial guiding spirit on this disastrous road, since he proclaimed a new religion of racial revolution and replaced religious ecstasy with his own music of intoxication in a way that made him Hitler�s own angel of inspiration. Hitler ("National Socialism has only one precursor - Richard Wagner") was himself welcomed with enthusiasm by Wagner�s heirs at the Bayreuth festivals.
So deep do feelings on these matters run that to this day there is an unofficial ban on the public performance of Wagner�s music in Israel. On the other hand, there are many thinkers and musicians, notably the Jewish conductor Daniel Barenboim, who deny that Wagner�s music was anti-Semitic, or his influence on Hitler critical.
The Bavarian Alpine resort of Schloss Elmau was the setting in July for a conference intended to deal in a balanced manner with the questions. It was called in response to a bizarre, unbalanced and ultimately unsuccessful conference held at Bayreuth itself a year earlier. Organized by pro-Wagner Germans and Israelis from Tel Aviv University, the 1998 conference was clearly meant as a sort of making-up gesture between the two nations, a koshering of Wagner that would win an Israeli stamp of approval and aid Bayreuth in its bid for cultural pre-eminence in the new Germany.
But there was no real debate and apparently none had been intended. The main critical experts on Wagner�s anti-Semitism had not been invited, with the sole exception (for amusingly complicated reasons) of myself. The real unstated goals seemed to have been getting the Israeli ban on Wagner performances lifted and getting Wolfgang Wagner, the current festival director (and Richard Wagner�s grandson), invited officially to Israel by Tel Aviv University.
Among the anti-Wagnerians not invited last year was German scholar Hartmut Zelinsky, whose work in the 1970s exposed the murderous potential of Wagner�s own anti-Semitism and then stripped away the efforts to conceal the extent of Bayreuth�s Nazi entanglements from 1923. Also not there were Nike Wagner, the authoritarian Wolfgang�s intellectual niece and harsh critic of his Nazi past and artistic limitations; and, of course, Wolfgang�s son Gottfried, the most vociferous advocate of the claim that both Wagner and Bayreuth bore major responsibility for the Holocaust. The program only reinforced the mood of repression and denial that continues to block any honest confrontation of Wagner�s - and Bayreuth�s - Jewish problem.
Gottfried Wagner wasn�t invited to Schloss-Elmau either, but Zelinsky and Nike Wagner were. Organ-ized by Dietmar Mueller-Elmau, director of the resort, which since 1995 has pioneered a vigorous series of programs on Jewish themes, including the Holocaust, the meeting was generally acclaimed as the first time that a conference in Germany had managed to bring together the pro- and anti-Wagner groups.
Much of the sinister background of Bayreuth would be a matter of purely historical interest, were it not for a prolonged effort by the Bayreuth faction to deny two points that are obvious to any objective observer: first, that Wagner�s own anti-Semitism was intense and profoundly colored even his music; second, that the Wagner family was bound up in a rapturous love affair with Hitler. This goes for Wolfgang, who now seems to genuinely regret (if mainly for business reasons) Hitler�s anti-Semitism, but even more so for his older brother, the late Wieland Wagner, whose personal closeness to Hitler and Nazi mentality made him more devoted than Wolfgang.
It would have been indelicate to bring up these matters while a guest of Wolfgang�s at Bayreuth last year, and even at Elmau family matters were avoided, though Nike Wagner made a brilliant speech excoriating not only Winifred, Wagner�s daughter-in-law, but also Winifred�s son Wolfgang, whom she has called the old "Hitler-soldier." Her talk was apparently designed to bolster her chances of taking over as festival director, but it is unlikely she will be able to outmaneuver Wolfgang and his redoubtable wife Gudrun.
The only person who would be a worthy opponent for Wolfgang is his son Gottfried, the author of a riveting autobiography that is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand either the Wagner family saga, or more importantly, the issues involved in the relationship of Wagner and his anti-Semitic legacy to Nazism and the Holocaust (see box, page 44). Gottfried argues that anti-Semitic themes are embedded in the plots and characters of Wagner�s operas, and even implanted subtly into the musical notes themselves. In "Die Meistersinger," for instance, there is a nasty parody of what Wagner imagined to be a synagogue chant.
This legacy was clearly a problem for many of the speakers at the Elmau conference. By the end of proceedings, the pro-Bayreuth scholars were generally upset at the sharpness of some of the critiques offered - particularly Zelinsky�s and mine.
A leading critic, Joachim Kaiser, was heard to mutter that all his life he had loved Wagner�s music, but now he was being forced to read the composer�s "damned anti-Semitic writings." Others, however, may be made of sterner stuff. Saul Friedl�nder, the noted Tel Aviv University historian and author of the highly praised book "Nazi Germany and the Jews," did not budge from his Bayreuth defense last year of Wagner, as not being a ruthless enough anti-Semite for Hitler to acclaim as a true precursor. Part of his evidence for this view was Hitler�s short speech at the 1934 Leipzig Wagner National Monument dedication, which indeed did not mention the composer�s anti-Semitism. However, it is clear from Hitler�s reported conversations and other evidence that the Nazi leader understood the anti-Semitism of his idol perfectly well, but preferred not to spell it out in public. When I played a tape of the 1934 speech I had found recently, one could hear the intensity of Hitler�s voice, which choked with quiet emotion, in contrast to his usual histrionic rhetoric.
The high point of the conference was Hartmut Zelinsky�s long, urbane lecture on the continuity from Wagner�s de-humanization of the Jews through Kaiser Wilhelm II�s mindless brutality (the Kaiser himself designed a Wagner monument) to fulfillment of his thinking at Auschwitz. This was the first time in 20 years that Zelinsky, who had been hounded from his post at the University of Munich, spoke as a Wagner expert at a conference in Germany.
London Times music critic Barry Millington (author of a path-breaking analysis of the anti-Semitism in the music of "Die Meistersinger") and the American Germanist Marc Weiner (who�s written a remarkable book on Wagner�s poetical and musical anti-Semitism) both pointed out that the anti-Semitic expressions in Wagner�s operas should be evident to anyone with an open mind. They also agreed that the abrupt rejection by many in the German audience of Zelinsky�s talk and my own, which examined Wagner�s exterminationist prophecies, was disturbingly irrational.
The Elmau event was only a first, long-delayed step in Germans� coming to terms fully with Wagner. But without the presence of Gottfried Wagner, any such conference still conforms to the political interest in repressing what is the whole truth.
Bayreuth is a little baroque world in which everyone is concerned about being "in" and willing to toady abjectly to Wolfgang. Apparent attempts at blurring Wagner�s anti-Semitism - hiring Jewish conductors such as James Levine and Daniel Barenboim (Leonard Bernstein refused to conduct there), putting up memorials to Jewish singers, holding conferences and exhibitions on Wagner and the Jews - are mere moves in a strategic business plan. Levine, disliking controversy, refuses to be drawn out on the subject. Barenboim simply keeps denying that there�s any problem either with Wagner or with Bayreuth. For him, Wagner is just a normal 19th-century composer. At a Columbia University conference in 1995, it fell to Barenboim�s friend Edward Said to remonstrate with him that Wagner�s anti-Semitism did demand some attention.
Certainly, Bayreuth has been de-Nazified, but instead of remorse and repentance, there has been only shallow regret there that it all proved so disastrous, and, in a rather choked way, that Hitler adopted such savage measures toward the Jews. Bayreuth�s "tactical philo-Semitism" conceals a breathtaking cynicism and self-interest and in this "paradise of repression," to paraphrase Gottfried and myself, any small element of sincerity that might be inspiring Wolfgang and company to repair things with the Jews usually results only in bumbling actions and clumsy statements that just make things worse.
Paul Lawrence Rose is Mitrani Professor of Jewish Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. His books include "Wagner - Race and Revolution" (1992) and "Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project" (1998).
Arts
|
 |
|
© The Jerusalem Report 1999-2004 |  |