Good idea!
I've just sent that very question to Adrian Wagner's website.
There are some difficulties that I asked for clarification over. For
example the site description claims that Adrian is Wagner's
great-grandson, while his "biography" claims that he is Wagner's
great-great-grandson.
If he's a great-grandson, he must be the son of Wolfgang or Wieland.
That's not impossible, as both men were alive in 1951 and 1952, when
Adrian would have been conceived. However Adrian was born in Kent in
1952, and that rules out his mother being married to Wolfgang or
Wieland. That in turn creates a surname problem, especially according
to the mores of the 1950s. As an illegitimate son, Adrian would take
his mother's name. For that to work, either brother would have had to
have had sex in 1951 or early 1952 with a passing woman, probably
English, who was no relation but whose surname also happened to be
Wagner. This is possible, but it seems a little unlikely.
If he's a great-great-grandson, as he also claims, we have an even
worse problem. Forget the Wagner great-granddaughters, because we
know that none of them had a child in England in 1952, and focus only
on the great-grandsons.
What makes the great-great-grandson claim kind of funny is that the
Richard Wagner great-grandsons were born in Germany in the 1940s and
Adrian was born in England in the early 1950s. For Adrian to be a
Wagner great-great-grandson, his father would have had to be Wolf
Siegfried Wagner, born in 1941, and just nine years old when he
conceived his son Adrian on a passing English girl whose surname just
happened to be Wagner. Or alternatively Gottfried Wagner, who would
have been four years old at the time.
There are two other Wagner great-grandsons, Manfred, who would have
been six years old at the moment of Adrian's conception, or Wieland,
who was two. However if either of these mighty infants were Adrian's
father, Adrian would bear the name Lafferentz, not Wagner. (Actually
he wouldn't, since he is more likely to have taken his mother's name
under those unlikely circumstances.)
The only way out that I can see was that Richard Wagner must have had
a previously unknown illegitimate son. I believe at least one such son
is known of. As was the custom at the time, he took his mother's name
and was not a Wagner. So if Adrian is descended from that son (though
I have an idea there would have been no descendents in that particular
case) he wouldn't have had the surname Wagner. The same naming problem
arises with any illegitimate son of Wagner, or of Wagner's son
Siegfried, or of his grandsons Wieland and Wolfgang.
Anyway, I've asked Adrian to help me with my confusion on this. I'll
pass on the gist of his explanation, if I get a reply.
Cheers!
Laon
