Twilight of the Wagners: The Unveiling of a Family's Legacy - Hardcover

Wagner, Gottfried; Couling, Della

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312199570 ISBN 13: 9780312199579

Publisher: Picador USA, 1999

Synopsis

Richard Wagner's great-grandson Gottfried Wagner, born after the end of World War II, was taught to worship his great-grandfather as a cultural ancestor of all of Germany. Richard Wagner inspired a generation of philosophers, cultural critics, and politicians. Perhaps no one took Richard Wagner's polemics more to heart than Adolf Hitler, for whom the musician was a foundational influence. In Gottfried Wagner's memoir, Twilight of the Wagners: The Unveiling of a Family's Legacy, Hitler is an inescapable presence, as he was in Gottfried's family--one of the many specters haunting the Wagner estate, though young Gottfried wondered if he was the only one who could see them. One afternoon he discovered old photographs and oil paintings of Hitler among the family memorabilia. Warned never to mention the pictures to anyone, he became an unwilling coconspirator in his family's secret. Gottfried Wagner reclaimed his voice during adolescence and began an impassioned crusade in adulthood to examine the hatred and racism he knew growing up in Bayreuth. Although disinherited and ostracized by his father, Gottfried has become an outspoken critic of Richard Wagner's legacy and a champion of greater understanding between Germans and Holocaust survivors worldwide. With a judicious eye for detail, a sweeping sense of conscience, and the determination to redeem himself and his past, Gottfried Wagner lays bare the sins of this powerful family.

About this title

About the Author

Gottfried Wagner was born in Bayreuth, Germany, in 1947. He received a Ph.D. in musicology, philosophy, and German philology from the University of Vienna, and a business degree from Bocconi University in Milan. He works internationally as a lecturer, stage and video director, music historian, and writer, and does extensive work with the Post-Holocaust Dialog Group, which he cofounded. He lives in Milan, Italy, with his wife and son.

Reviews

According to Greek myth, the sins of a father are visited upon his sons for three generations. Born in 1947, Gottfried Wagner is the third generation of operatic genius Richard Wagner's offspring, and it is clear in this prickly memoir that he does continue to carry the burden of his great-grandfather's infamous anti-Semitism. Though Wagner (1813-1883) died six years before Hitler was born, Gottfried demonstrates that the composer's virulent essays, which call for Jews to "redeem" themselves through "destruction," exercised a powerful influence on Hitler. More importantly, Gottfried shows that Wagner's descendantsAespecially his daughter-in-law WinifredAwere ardent supporters and close friends of Hitler. Furthermore, Gottfried contends that his father, Wolfgang, now the director of the annual Wagner festival in Bayreuth, continues to obfuscate the family's and the festival's Nazi connections. Gottfried has long been an outspoken critic of Bayreuth's tainted history, perhaps in part because his childhood there, and his familial relations, have been so unpleasant. In fact, much of this memoir is devoted to showing how Gottfried's cold, autocratic father allegedly has sabotaged his career as an opera director and stubbornly refused to let him participate in the festival's planning. Gottfried's determination to honestly face his disquieting legacy raises enduring questions about the relationship between art and politics and about the responsibilities today's Germans have for their predecessors' sins. Photos not seen by PW. Author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In his memoirs, prominent musicologist and stage director Wagner unveils the anti-Semitic sentiment that prevailed in his family ever since his illustrious great-grandfather, composer Richard Wagner, expressed his pathological Jew-hatred in his 1850 essay ``Jews in Music.'' Born shortly after WWII into an influential family who singlehandedly managed the Bayreuth Wagner Festival, Gottfired began investigating German-Jewish relations and his family's Nazi past from an early age. This interest eventually made him an outcast among his relatives. Richard Wagner anticipated Hitler's Final Solution when he called for the restoration of the German Aryan race, pure of degenerative Jewish blood. Drawing on family letters and photographs, Gottfried uncovers his grandmother's close relationship with Hitler: Winifred was proud to have supplied an incarcerated Hitler with the paper on which he wrote Mein Kampf. Although she declined his marriage proposal, she remained the Fhrer's intimate friend and a dedicated Nazi Party member. As for Hitler, he found Wagner's chauvinistic ideas inspiring and his music a perfect background for military parades. We read precious little about Richard Wagner and the origins of his ideological stance, as the book mainly details the author's interaction with his family legacy. Gottfried takes us through a confrontation with his authoritative father, academic and family research, job searches, two marriages, and the adoption of a Romanian orphan. Gottfried's accomplishments include a doctoral thesis on Jewish-German composer Kurt Weill, whose works were condemned in Nazi Germany, opera productions in Europe and Turkey, and worldwide lectures on the Wagners. In the 1980s, his career took an odd twist when he tried his hand in banking. Thanks in large part to Gottfried's lecture tour in Israel, Richard Wagner's once-taboo music was played for the first time on Israeli radio in 1990. A disturbing examination of the great composer's legacy that sheds new light on a powerful clan and the persistence of Nazi ideology in postwar Germany. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Gottfried, the great-grandson of Richard, indulges himself with this opportunity to lash out at everybody who has ever done him wrong, reducing what could have been a fascinating family memoir to just another tale of a dysfunctional clan. The bad guys, especially Gottfried's father, Wolfgang, are mostly within the family. Beyond them, any art critic, musician, or politician that ever crossed Gottfried is always reduced to rage by a perfect comeback or Gottfried's righteous indignation. This autobiography strings together one anecdote after another, an exercise in intense navel gazing. It's a pity, for Wagner could have told a compelling story of the Bayreuth Festival's relationship to the Nazis, anti-Semitism, and postwar Germany, but he fails. Of interest to Wagner and opera scholars who want an inside view of Bayreuth's feuds; recommended for larger academic libraries with an extensive interest in music history or opera.ARandall L. Schroeder, Wartburg Coll. Lib., Waverly, IA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

My parents were on holiday, recovering from their Bayreuth Festival exertions. I took the chance to explore a wooden shed next to the garage, where Father's heavy BMW motorcycle and sidecar were housed. In the sidecar, in two cardboard boxes, I found a large number of round, aluminum cans of various sizes....In each can there was a reel of film. I took out one of the larger reels and inspected it with a magnifying glass. What I discovered left me stunned. I saw my aunts, Uncle Wieland, and my grandmother, Winifred, together with Hitler, who was dressed in an elegant double-breasted suit, laughing as they strolled in Wahnfried Park. Happy Fuhrer, happy Wagner children, happy Grandmother Winifred! Then pictures of the Fuhrer in the Festspielhaus. All arms were outstretched in a "Heil Hitler" salute: Wagner's art and the Fuhrer's power.

--from Twilight of the Wagners

Edition details

• Publisher: Picador USA
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312199570
• ISBN 13: 9780312199579
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 310