What is "On-Topic" for a Wagner Newsgroup?
Claire McIntosh
nation-wrecking activities are perfectly relevant and on-topic for a
Wagner newsgroup because Wagner's understanding of the 'Jewish
Question' was central to his revolutionary art and philosophy.
Wagner sought revolution through nationalism as a way to remove what
he saw as a corrupt, money-based system. He therefore infused his
operas with the very European and nationalist ideals of freedom,
justice and humanity. He believed that Jews were the greatest obstacle
to realizing these ideals - as the agents and symbol of greed, egoism
and lust for domination of others and nature - so, therfore, the Jews
are depicted in a less than favorable light through the characters in
his musical dramas (i.e. Mime and Alberich). This same general
philosophy/ideology is repeated over and over again in the Wagner
essays Judaism in Music (1850), Know Thyself (1878), Modern (1878),
What is German? (1878), Heldenthum und Christenthum (1881), and On the
Womanly in the Human Race (1883).
Of course, this is why it so important for Jews like Derrick Everett
to control this newsgroup, and to control Wagner opera productions to
the greatest extent possible. They want to stamp out every influence
and every idea that is dangerous to them, and that certainly includes
European nationalism and its promotion through musical drama. (The
only kind of nationalism they want to hear about is Zionism.)
The Jewish regulars, their Shabbos Goyim, and the terminally
politically correct, will always smear posters of articles and essays
on these topics as "trolls" in an attempt to obfuscate - in hopes that
the facts therein will disappear down Orwell's memory hole. These
totalitarian enemies of free speech insist that Wagner was not a
racist, despite the evidence; insist that Wagner did not wish to
overthrow the Jews' money-based system, despite the evidence; insist
that Wagner *did not* believe whites to be superior to non-whites,
despite the evidence; and insist that Wagner was "non-violent,"
despite having stockpiled weapons for a revolution (including
hand-grenades). The list goes on and on, but the point is well made.
What's taking place in the Wagner newsgroup can best be described as
historical revision - a deconstruction project to put Wagner in line
with global Zionist ideology.
Make no mistake, Derrick Everett and the other PC-enforcers are not
Wagnerians but rather propagandists for the cause of global Zionism.
The following is from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Derrick
Everett, the self-appointed grand inquisitor of the Wagner newsgroup,
has declared these facts to be "heretical" and hopes to kill or
imprison all who express them.
The fact is, the paper tiger, Mr. Everett, is a nobody, who possesses
not a bit of power or authority, even in his own home town. Yet he
never tires of issuing empty threats!
sparafu...@yahoo.com
Derrick Everett Consulting
Besøksadresse: Professor Kohts Vei 60, 1368 Stabekk
Telefon: 67591331
Faks: 67591331
Orgnr: 983027911
(An address soon to be published to every racist, skinhead,
nationalist, and neo-nazi message list, newsgroup, and discussion
forum worldwide.)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner]
Excerpt from Wikipedia:
Wagner was convinced of the truth of the Aryanist racist philosophy
and pronouncements of Arthur de Gobineau, additionally being
influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer's general pessimistic elitism. The
influence of Gobineau in Wagner's mature period, even extending
esoterically into his art-work, is very strong. In his "Introduction
to A Work of Count Gobineau's", Wagner expresses gratitude to the
"shrewdest of ethnologists for an explanation why our truly lofty
minds stand lonelier every day, and, perhaps in consequence, grow ever
rarer; so that we can imagine the greatest artists and poets
surrounded by a world to which they have naught to say." In his essay
"Hero-dom and Christendom",
Wagner's Aryan racism is fully and emphatically articulated:
"Whilst yellow races have viewed themselves as sprung from monkeys,
the white traced back their origin to gods, and deemed themselves
marked out for rulership. It has been made quite clear that we should
have no History of Man at all, had there been no movements, creations
and achievements of the white men; and we may fitly take world-history
as the consequence of these white men mixing with the black and
yellow, and bringing them in so far into history as that mixture
altered them and made them less unlike the white. Incomparably fewer
in individual numbers than the lower races, the ruin of the
white races may be referred to their having been obliged to mix with
them; whereby, as remarked already, they suffered more from the loss
of their purity than the others could gain by the ennobling of their
blood...[I]f the noblest race's rulership and exploitation of the
lower races, quite justified in a natural sense, has founded a sheer
immoral system throughout the world, any equalizing of them all by
flat commixture decidedly would not conduct to an aesthetic state of
things. To us Equality is only thinkable as based upon a universal
moral concord, such as we can but deem true Christianity elect to
bring about."
Wagner's deep concern for the perceived racial crisis of modern white
civilization affected him until the very end of his life. "On the
Womanly in the Human Race" (1883), a recently composed essay found in
Wagner's papers after his death, dramatically warns that "it is
certain that the noblest white race is monogamic at its first
appearance in saga and history, but marches toward its downfall
through polygamy with the races which it conquers."
Robert G.L. Waite states in "The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler": "In
Wagner the Grail and the spear of Parsifal are not symbols of Christ's
blood shed for the redemption of all mankind; they are signs of Aryan
racism... Wagner himself pointed out that a main purpose for writing
Parsifal was to deliver his racial message. In an article published in
the Bayreuther Blatter for November-December 1882, he explained that
in his opera 'the Kingship of this Brotherhood' was the elite of the
race, 'a race chosen to protect the Grail'" (p. 112).
The resounding Aryanism of the eccentric genius Wagner, originally
inspired by Gobineau, was later to exert a profoundly deep influence
over the developing mind of Adolf Hitler, in addition to the gnostic
'Ariosophical' racism of Lanz von Liebenfels. This is confirmed by
Robert G.L Waite, who states "Hitler [probably] first began to read
Wagner's essays on race, politics, art, and religion...during his
youth in Linz and Vienna, when the composer's words were still
available in municipal libraries... The young man who was so much
taken by Wagner's music was delighted to learn that his hero's
political and racial ideas were the same as his own. [...] The creator
of [German National Socialism] himself said that any who sought to
understand it 'must first know Richard Wagner,' and boasted that he
had read everything the master had ever written. 'I have the most
intimate familiarity with Wagner's mental processes,' he said. 'At
every stage of my life I come back to him'" (p. 103, The Psychopathic
God).
kate@musicnet
Claire McIntosh did actually write:
> Any article or essay about the Jews and their nefarious,
> nation-wrecking activities are perfectly relevant and on-topic for a
> Wagner newsgroup because Wagner's understanding of the 'Jewish
> Question' was central to his revolutionary art and philosophy.
>
Ah-ha! Well done! A post that has some relevance to the group -
although it is both anti-Semitic and provocative in tone - in 1985
Manfred Eger, director of the Richard Wagner Museum in Bayreuth, said,
when opening the exhibition entitled "Wagner and the Jews":
"Richard Wagner's anti-Semitism throws a considerable shadow over his
person and his work, there are expressions used by him which could have
been attributed to the National Socialist, violently anti-Semitic, Der
Sturmer and which are used today to brand him as a proponent of the
Holocaust. But there are also remarks in which he retracts some of his
earlier pronouncements."
Wagner, during his lifetime, was revolutionary, socialist, nationalist
- and why not anti-Semite? It was rife in the society around him.
Ultimately, he, like any artist great or small, was a product of that
society - and should not be judged apart from it.
Do we today berate Brecht because of the evils of Stalinism?
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/8cf0b7c8-a0e0-11d9-95e5-00000e2511c8.html
The above link is to the Financial Times' Arts pages and the article
"Tainted by Purity" by Andrew Clark
"Contrary to what diehard Wagnerites claim, Nazi ideology was not a
distortion of Wagner's ideas. It was an amplification, taken to
horrendous conclusions. Wagner's ideas were in turn a development of
an important strand of 19th century German thinking - the concept of
Sonderweg, or special calling. Many German writers and philosophers
thought they had a mission to reverse the moral and spiritual decay to
which they believed humanity was falling victim. Judging by his later
"Regeneration" writings (1878-81), Wagner saw interbreeding between
races as a prime cause of that decay."
"It wasn't Wagner's fault that the Nazis developed his ideas on
racial purity to such a horrendous extreme. And it wouldn't do today
if every production interpreted Wagner in the context of the Third
Reich. Wagner's genius as a creative artist lies every bit as much in
the allegorical depth of his dramas, susceptible to any number of
interpretations, as in the power of his music. He never made anything
explicit: his works deal in symbols, metaphors, ideals and the
transcendent.
But it seems pointless to deny that there are pronounced racist
elements in Wagner's ideology, that they formed a subtext in his
works, and that they were adopted by the Nazis. Those that deny it
usually have too much of an emotional investment in Wagner. They
don't want to admit his works might be tainted.
Call it anti-Semitism, call it political incorrectness - you can't
pretend it doesn't exist in Wagner. What we need to do is find ways
of confronting it. The most interesting Wagner productions today are
those, like the Hamburg Meistersinger, that address the difficult
ideological issues inherent in the works. That's why, more than 120
years after his death, Wagner is more contentious than ever."
So there you have it - I do find it hard to accept the arguments that
Wagner wasn't an anti-Semite...it seems to distort all the known
facts.
Mike Scott Rohan
from "kate@musicnet" <waggaw...@yahoo.com.au> contains these words:
> Claire McIntosh did actually write:
> > Any article or essay about the Jews and their nefarious,
> > nation-wrecking activities are perfectly relevant and on-topic for a
> > Wagner newsgroup because Wagner's understanding of the 'Jewish
> > Question' was central to his revolutionary art and philosophy.
> >
> Ah-ha! Well done! A post that has some relevance to the group -
> although it is both anti-Semitic and provocative in tone
I beg to differ. The "Jews" of this troll's imagination and the "Jews"
of Wagner's are very different creatures -- neither with much relevance
to the real people of course, but with little else in common as well.
They have, however, often been confused; and to treat the troll's
contribution as in any way relevant risks legitimizing this confusion.
Wagner, for example, hardly spoke in terms of "the Jewish question"; he
did not believe in any "international Jewish conspiracy" or other such
Elders-of-Zion crap -- the only conspiracy he believed in was against
himself!; he did not believe in "racial purity", "purity of the blood",
"the German race" or any other such balderdash central to Nazi beliefs;
and above all he called neither for any social exclusion of the Jews,
nor for any violence towards them, let alone extermination. His thoughts
on the matter are confused and often contradictory, but that much is
beyond argument. His "remedy" for the effects he believed Jews were
having on German society was assimilation. That is why there is less
discrepancy than there's sometimes thought to be between Wagner's
appalling language about Jews and his actual behaviour towards them.
Wagner's view was unpleasant, and obviously rooted in centuries of
received prejudice; but it was not the same as the Nazis', let alone the
second-hand caricature the troll effects.
> Do we today berate Brecht because of the evils of Stalinism?
Actually we do, like mad -- or we should. He exemplified the hypocrisy
that dogged the European intellectual world in the post-war years and
endures today, the espousal, if not of Stalinism direct, of the Soviet
line generally. His pretensions and rationalizations cloaked the
shoddiest of Stalinist propaganda and the Soviet version of history with
a veneer of intellectual respectability. He also provided a model for
fellow-travellers to "talk Soviet and live capitalist"; his expensively
tailored "proletarian" clothes, insisting on living in West Berlin while
mounting agitprop in the West, are symptomatic of this. His creative
leeching on real authors and his heavy handed reductionism, cutting
everything down to crude two-value agitprop -- compare Coriolan to
Shakespeare's original! -- and reducing characters to posturing
stereotypes, was the source of the current shibboleths of the German
theatre, in which most stagings look alike, and from that the confining
orthodoxy governing recent Wagner productions.
{snip}
> So there you have it - I do find it hard to accept the arguments that
> Wagner wasn't an anti-Semite...it seems to distort all the known
> facts.
I don't think anyone in this group has ever suggested Wagner wasn't an
anti-semite. He was. The relevant questions are what anti-semitism meant
in his terms, whether it bore any relation to the Nazi variety, and
whether it inspired it. As the sketchy outline above makes clear, there
is vanishingly little resemblance; and as for inspiring it, no serious
and reputable modern history of Nazism, such as Michael Burleigh's,
gives Wagner more than the most perfunctory mention, if any. Even on
Hitler personally Kershaw, the definitive historian today, rules out any
significant link. As I've said here before, if the Nazis had genuinely
followed Wagner, no Jew would have been more than a bit insulted -- and
that while sitting at their dinner tables. Which is not very nice, but
hardly worse than other great anti-semites whom nobody bothers much
about -- Yeats, T.S.Eliot, Pound, Chesterton. If it weren't for the
coincidental rise of the Nazis, whose beliefs quite demonstrably grew
out of the more prevalent and violent Austro-German anti-semitism,
nobody would be so bothered about Wagner's, either. At most his beliefs
and theirs can be considered symptoms of the same horrible disease; but
his was just a mild rash.
Cheers,
Mike
Jeff
<mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk> wrote:
>> > Any article or essay about the Jews and their nefarious,
>> > nation-wrecking activities are perfectly relevant and on-topic for a
>> > Wagner newsgroup because Wagner's understanding of the 'Jewish
>> > Question' was central to his revolutionary art and philosophy.
>> >
>
>> Ah-ha! Well done! A post that has some relevance to the group -
>> although it is both anti-Semitic and provocative in tone
>
>I beg to differ. The "Jews" of this troll's imagination and the "Jews"
>of Wagner's are very different creatures -- neither with much relevance
>to the real people of course, but with little else in common as well.
>They have, however, often been confused; and to treat the troll's
>contribution as in any way relevant risks legitimizing this confusion.
Yes, demand conformity, lest the people be maliciously confused.
>Wagner, for example, hardly spoke in terms of "the Jewish question";
Hardly? You mean just sometimes.
>he did not believe in any "international Jewish conspiracy" or other such
>Elders-of-Zion crap --
Who said that he did? He favored a violent revolution to overthrow the
parasitic money-based system.
"...the Jew..rules, and will rule, so long as Money remains the power
before which all our doings and dealings lose their force..."/Judaism
in Music PW3 1850/1869 p81
"..the Jews..."Fine fellow", R. [Wagner] exclaims, "losing their own
language, when that's what a people preserves longest. It shows that
they are mainly there to live like parasites in the body of
others."/CWDII 30/11/1879
>the only conspiracy he believed in was against
>himself!; he did not believe in "racial purity", "purity of the blood",
He most certainly did believe in racial purity, one of his last
published thoughts were as follows:
From "Hero-dom and Christendom":
Stop lying, Rohan.
>He called neither for any social exclusion of the Jews,
>nor for any violence towards them,
That would have been suicide! The best he could do was frame the fight
as one against the Jews' money-based system, while continuing to
survive within that system. Not unlike what Mel Gibson is doing.
However, unlike Gibson, Wagner never offered an apology for writing
Judaism in Music (1850), Know Thyself (1878), Modern (1878), What is
German? (1878), Heldenthum und Christenthum (1881), or On the Womanly
in the Human Race (1883).
Each essay chock-full of the sentiments that you despise and would
denounce as "Nazism" if they were posted fresh in this group.
>on the matter are confused and often contradictory, but that much is
>beyond argument. His "remedy" for the effects he believed Jews were
>having on German society was assimilation.
Horse manure. If he *really* believed *that*, he would not have
written the following in private correspondence:
"This is the true pit of Hell", Wagner said regarding Jewish
dominance. [CWD2 30/4/1879]
"Jews can never really become anything else." [CWDII 25/5/1878]
"I consider the Jewish race the born enemy of pure humanity and all
that is noble in man; there is no doubt that we Germans especially
will be destroyed by them." /SLE p918 22/11/1881
"R. [Wagner] deplores the fact that the Jewish religion has been
grafted on to Christianity and has completely spoiled it."/CWDI
17/3/1870
>That is why there is less
>discrepancy than there's sometimes thought to be between Wagner's
>appalling language about Jews and his actual behavior towards them.
Do you realize how many times you've posted these same words? This is
nothing but a canned response. Trotted out whenever you're questioned.
>Wagner's view was unpleasant, and obviously rooted in centuries of
>received prejudice; but it was not the same as the Nazis',
No one never claimed that it was!
I am not Simon Weil or Larry Solomon. Don't get the impression that
because their material was posted here that I agree with it. Like
everything posted by Jews, there is an element of truth and some good
reference material quoted therein, thus the articles are interesting
as a topic of discussion. However, instead of discussing them you
throw out idiotic accusations of "attempting to promote neo-Nazism" as
part of your standard Pavlovian, knee-jerk-off reaction to all
dissident voices.
>let alone the
>second-hand caricature the troll effects.
Second hand? You ignore Wagner's own writings, claiming that he didn't
really mean what he wrote. Then you accuse me of using second hand
sources? Nice try.
Using the word "troll" over and over again to describe people you
don't like will eventually wear thin on even your most strident
supporters. Keep it up.
>> Do we today berate Brecht because of the evils of Stalinism?
>
>Actually we do, like mad -- or we should. He exemplified the hypocrisy
>that dogged the European intellectual world in the post-war years and
>endures today,
It endures thanks to you, Rohan. Your mind boggling hypocrisy renders
you incapable of condemning Lazar Kaganovich or Lavrenti Beria as the
mass-murderers that they were - because they happen to belong to the
same ethnic group that employs you. You suppress genocide and history
in this newsgroup in order to make a buck. And you do it like mad.
>His creative
>leeching on real authors and his heavy handed reductionism,
Projection! That's exactly what you do!
>> So there you have it - I do find it hard to accept the arguments that
>> Wagner wasn't an anti-Semite...it seems to distort all the known
>> facts.
Yes, here we have it. A pile of nicely decorated horse manure that
contradicts half of what Wagner himself wrote and had published.
It "seams" to distort all the known facts? Yes, leave yourself some
wiggle room. You'll need it if you keep this up.
>whether it bore any relation to the Nazi variety, and
>whether it inspired it.
No. The issue at hand is whether Wagner would have liked to have seen
the white raced mixed with non-whites and thus 'borged' out of
existence. The issue is, did Wagner want to topple the Jews' money
based system, or didn't he? And did Wagner believe the white race and
Germany to be worthy of survival, or didn't he give a hoot about that?
In other words, would he support miscegenation and open borders, like
you do, or would he oppose them, like I do.
Derrick and/or Laon say that Wagner didn't give a damn about white
people, or Germany, or nationalism. They have even tried to make him
out to be a Judeo-Christian. They are liars. So don't try to redirect
the discussion into one about Wagner and Hitler.
>is vanishingly little resemblance; and as for inspiring it, no serious
>and reputable modern history of Nazism, such as Michael Burleigh's,
>gives Wagner more than the most perfunctory mention, if any.
Perfunctory mention?
Make up your mind. Is it "none" or "if any"? Pretty good attempt at
bullshitting the lurkers, Rohan. Most won't bother to do their own
research.
>Even on
>Hitler personally Kershaw, the definitive historian today, rules out any
>significant link.
Translation: There are plenty of links, just none that are significant
enough to blame Wagner for the Holocaust.
You state the obvious, as you spin in circles attempting to bite your
own tail.
>Nazis, whose beliefs quite demonstrably grew
>out of the more prevalent and violent Austro-German anti-semitism,
The 232 pages of "The Inequality of the Human Races" had a powerful
influence on Wagner and his son-in-law, Houston Stewart Chamberlain,
who, in turn, influenced Nazi racial doctrine. This new awareness of
Jewish usury directed against France, Germany, and England
proliferated throughout the countries and their governments and
literature over the next century.
No one ever suggested that Nazi ideology was based upon Wagner or
Gobineau. The key word is "influenced" - that's different from - as
you say - Wagner being the same as the Nazis or Gobineau.
>nobody would be so bothered about Wagner's, either. At most his beliefs
>and theirs can be considered symptoms of the same horrible disease; but
>his was just a mild rash.
Wagner of a man of genius, which is why you are here spinning like
mad. Everyone cares what he thought about everything. Wagner had no
disease, but rather a clear understanding of Jewish hubris and their
money-grubbing, nation-wrecking ways.
"...the Jews: they comprise our civilisation, he [Wagner] says - that
is obvious , and that is why it is worth nothing." 1/CWDII 20/5/1882
>Cheers,
Put down the shot glass. Time to dry up and blow way.
>Mike
kate@musicnet
Mike Scott Rohan wrote:
>
> > Ah-ha! Well done! A post that has some relevance to the group -
> > although it is both anti-Semitic and provocative in tone
>
> I beg to differ. The "Jews" of this troll's imagination and the "Jews"
> of Wagner's are very different creatures -- neither with much relevance
> to the real people of course,
Sorry if my post has given any offence, it was unintentional on my
part. However, that said, I do feel the need to reiterate elements from
that and earlier posts in mitigation of my comment / s.
Homer Simpson has been busily cutting and pasting racist and
anti-Semitic nonsense in this place, his nom-de-plume varying with the
wind direction or some equally random event.
For example, he pasted a review by Michael Collins Piper (Piper's big
on conspiracy theories) of "Auschwitz: the final count" edited by
Vivian Bird - Bird was a contributor in the 50's to "The
European" which was edited by Diana Mosley and supported her husband,
Oswald Mosley's British Union movement.
This book, a collection of revisionist essays, all fairly old,
doesn't address the "problem" of the book's title - "the
final count". Instead, Bird flounces about playing with figures to
achieve a final Auschwitz death toll of 73,137 - this based on the
German records.
In point of fact, the German death books for Auschwitz (as any
"historian" worth his salt would know) are incomplete - a fact
acknowledge by no less an authority than David Irving! So, the death
books are missing for 1940, 1941, 1944(in part), and 1945. Bird's
figures are based on 1942 and 43.
The other essays are:
Thies Christophersen's essay, "The Auschwitz Lie."
William Lindsay's essay, "Zyklon B, Auschwitz and the Trial of Bruno
Tesch."
Fred Leuchter's article, "Inside the Auschwitz 'Gas Chambers.'
Willis Carto's "Why is the 'Holocaust' Important?"
All the usual suspects and works published in the 70's and early
80's, which look a little tired against some of the more recent
research and findings. But none of which (IMHO) has any relevance to
Richard Wagner or this newsgroup.
Now I am an aficionado of, not an expert on Wagner, and I have lurked
around here sometime. Recently, I responded to some of the more
inaccurate claims in Homer's posts - errors of fact. More recently
still, I have questioned the relevance and the validity of his posts to
Richard Wagner and this group.
The latest post I responded to, stating it was 'on topic' (but also
acknowledging it as both provocative and anti-Semitic in its own right)
concerned Richard Wagner - specifically his anti-Semitism. Regardless
of circumstance, such a post is "on topic" - certainly more "on
topic" than most of the other posts from Homer, and as such is
deserving of a response (IMHO).
As you acknowledge in your response to my post, Wagner was anti-Semitic
and I would suggest that this "condition" might well have worsened
with Wagner's encountering the works of Schopenhauer.
On Wagner's influence - Hitler's friend, Kubizek reported:
"Hitler read everything available about the master with a feverish
heart, studying Wagner's work and biography with incredible tenacity
and determination...as if it could become part of his own being."
"It could happen that Adolf ...recited by heart a letter or a note by
Richard Wagner or read to me one of his writings, for example,
'Kunstwerk der Zukunft' or 'Die Kunst der Revolution." (August
Kubizek, 'Adolf Hitler, Mein Jugend freund').
It was fairly obvious (and acknowledged by Brigitte Hamann in
'Hitler's Vienna') "Wagner's weltanschauung and politics also
became a model for young Hitler".
Hitler himself stated: "I was so poor during my years in Vienna that
I could afford only the very best performances, which explains that I
heard Tristan thirty or forty times back then alone."
Hitler went on to familiarise himself with 'stage techniques'
during his time in Vienna. He attempted (age 19) to complete the
Germanic mythic play Wagner had only outlined: 'Wieland der
Schmied'. And the knowledge gained in Vienna clearly influenced the
'stage-productionlike' Nuremberg rallies - 'the sea of red
flags, the marching up during the roll of drums and music by Wagner,
preferably in darkness, when it is easier to put an audience in a
solemn, emotionally charged mood...all this was as if in a perfectly
staged Wagner opera, with the Reich chancellor's entrance and speech
as the big climax' (Hamann).
In 1883 Schonerer highjacked Wagner (who'd recently died) and turned
a memorial ceremony in to a powerful nationalistic political rally. A
few years on, and the new Richard Wagner Association in Vienna was a
hotbed of anti-Semitism and Germanic nationalism. Germanic-national
celebrations were always accompanied by Wagner's music - the great
School Association celebration in Vienna, as an example, which launched
with the Rienzi overture and ended with the Meistersinger.
Wagner's ideas concerning the Jews, expressed in "The work of Art
of the Future" and "Modern" - were widely adopted by all the
volkish and pan-Germanic associations in Vienna by 1900. And it was in
to this hotbed of nationalism and anti-Semitism that young Hitler
progressed.
Around 1910 while in the Mannerheim young Hitler studied the revolution
of 1848, including the connection of his idols, Richard Wagner and
Gottfried Semper to those events as 'revolutionaries' in Dresden.
The failed German unification movement was much on his mind and he saw
Wagner as an exponent of German nationalism and unification.
Hitler at age 16 had seen Wagner's "Rienzi". There is some
evidence that it was important to Hitler to be regarded as Rienzi
reincarnated. Wagner had seen Rienzi as the hero who saved and
liberated the people, "an extreme enthusiast who like a flashing beam
of light appeared among a people that had sunk low and was degenerated
but which he believed he was called upon to enlighten and lift up
high." (Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: Sein Leben - Sein
Werk -Sein Jahrundert).
Hitler stated that in Vienna "I obtained the foundations for a
philosophy in general and a political view in particular - " And the
known influences? Dr Karl Lueger, Georg Schonerer, Franz Stein, Karl
Hermann Wolf, and the works of Richard Wagner. From his time in Vienna
he carried with him the memory of the 'Schonerians "Heil"
greeting, the List disciples swastika, the Germanic cult, the idea of
breeding, as well as Karl Iro's idea to control Gypsies by tattooing
numbers on their lower arms.'
It was perhaps Richard Wagner's misfortune to become the idol of a
sixteen-year-old Austrian boy who would later try to put the confused
ideas of a number of German-Volkish sectarians in to practice - with
disastrous results for Germany and the rest of the world.
As stated in my original post, it is nonsense to look at an artist in
isolation from his or her times, from the society that helps to form
them, and the attitudes and values prevailing within that society.
For good or bad, Richard Wagner was very much a product of his age.
Those ideas of his we describe as 'extreme' found very fertile soil
indeed within the context of the society around him.
Mike Scott Rohan
from Mike Scott Rohan <mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk> contains
these words:
> {snip}
> Cheers,
> Mike
Written in haste, and a couple of mistakes got in -- should be "...the
troll affects"; and "...living in West Berlin while mounting agitprop in
the East". And the bit about "..sitting at their dinner tables." means
the dinner tables of these putative Wagner-following Nazis, if one can
imagine such a thing. If they'd followed Wagner, they'd have had Jews as
guests, Jews as friends, Jews as colleagues, Jews as assistants living
with the family -- and all, no doubt, lectured in severe tones on the
folly of being Jewish.
Personally, if I'd been one of Wagner's Jewish acquaintances I might
have treated genius to a thick ear, but then I didn't know him, they
did, and no doubt that made a difference. John Gutman suggests they put
up with this because they were all slavering masochists, but that hardly
describes the assured and capable Angelo Neumann, for example.
Thinking about this paradox, I remembered Boswell, a Scot, and Dr.
Johnson, forever inveighing against the Scots in terms nearly as abusive
and prejudiced as Wagner's, and publishing it too -- yet they had a
devoted father-son style relationship. And I'd say Johnson was
unarguably a good and moral man -- and certainly nobody much minds about
his bigotry now, considering it a forgiveable and even amusing* quirk of
genius. Surely Wagner, if less amusing, qualifies for the same leniency?
Cheers,
Mike
*To the English, anyhow.
Jeff
<mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk> wrote:
>Written in haste, and a couple of mistakes got in -- should be "...the
>troll affects"; and "...living in West Berlin while mounting agitprop in
>the East". And the bit about "..sitting at their dinner tables." means
>the dinner tables of these putative Wagner-following Nazis, if one can
>imagine such a thing. If they'd followed Wagner, they'd have had Jews as
>guests, Jews as friends, Jews as colleagues, Jews as assistants living
>with the family -- and all, no doubt, lectured in severe tones on the
>folly of being Jewish.
>
>John Gutman suggests they put
>up with this because they were all slavering masochists,
That pretty much covers it.
Mike Scott Rohan
from "kate@musicnet" <waggaw...@yahoo.com.au> contains these words:
> Mike Scott Rohan wrote:
> >
> > > Ah-ha! Well done! A post that has some relevance to the group -
> > > although it is both anti-Semitic and provocative in tone
> >
> > I beg to differ. The "Jews" of this troll's imagination and the "Jews"
> > of Wagner's are very different creatures -- neither with much relevance
> > to the real people of course,
> Sorry if my post has given any offence, it was unintentional on my
> part. However, that said, I do feel the need to reiterate elements from
> that and earlier posts in mitigation of my comment / s.
> The latest post I responded to, stating it was 'on topic' (but also
> acknowledging it as both provocative and anti-Semitic in its own right)
> concerned Richard Wagner - specifically his anti-Semitism. Regardless
> of circumstance, such a post is "on topic" - certainly more "on
> topic" than most of the other posts from Homer, and as such is
> deserving of a response (IMHO).
Oh, no offence -- but you said that this character's posting had some
relevance to the group. My point was that I don't think that can
possibly be so, whatever the tone, because even where his world-view
appears to overlap with Wagner's, there is in fact nothing in common. To
respond as if there were only allows him some small shred of legitimacy.
Where his views come from I would hate to say, but there is nothing in
them open to sane discussion.
> As you acknowledge in your response to my post, Wagner was anti-Semitic
> and I would suggest that this "condition" might well have worsened
> with Wagner's encountering the works of Schopenhauer.
> On Wagner's influence - Hitler's friend, Kubizek reported:
> "Hitler read everything available about the master with a feverish
> heart, studying Wagner's work and biography with incredible tenacity
> and determination...as if it could become part of his own being."
> "It could happen that Adolf ...recited by heart a letter or a note by
> Richard Wagner or read to me one of his writings, for example,
> 'Kunstwerk der Zukunft' or 'Die Kunst der Revolution." (August
> Kubizek, 'Adolf Hitler, Mein Jugend freund').
But Kubizek has been fairly thoroughly discredited by contemporary
historians. His "reminiscences" were originally, apparently
ghost-written by a Nazi journalist, with purely propagandist purposes.
The intention was to depict Hitler as the man of destiny, drawing his
inspiration from the mighty figures of German culture. There is no
substantial evidence that Hitler ever read a word of Wagner's writings,
and a great deal to the contrary. There are no discernible references to
them in Mein Kampf, for example, where you would most expect them --
even though the original jumble of ravings was worked over by
Hanfstaengl and other more literate party figures.
> It was fairly obvious (and acknowledged by Brigitte Hamann in
> 'Hitler's Vienna') "Wagner's weltanschauung and politics also
> became a model for young Hitler".
I haven't read that, unfortunately. Hamann is a solid historian, but I
wonder how she would justify such a specific reference, given that in
fact he seemed to have no discernible ideology at all around this time,
and that, for example, in the confusion after WWI he has been found to
have joined the Communist Party before he became involved with the
Freikorps -- apparently a complete loose cannon. Hamann herself revealed
that his "first love", one of the more genuine reminiscences in
Kuzbicek, worshipped from afar, in fact was unmistakeably Jewish -- so
Wagner's influence evidently hadn't taken much hold then!
> Hitler himself stated: "I was so poor during my years in Vienna that
> I could afford only the very best performances, which explains that I
> heard Tristan thirty or forty times back then alone."
> Hitler went on to familiarise himself with 'stage techniques'
> during his time in Vienna. He attempted (age 19) to complete the
> Germanic mythic play Wagner had only outlined: 'Wieland der
> Schmied'.
Again, Kubizek taken on trust. Hitler could never read music or play an
instrument.
And the knowledge gained in Vienna clearly influenced the
> 'stage-productionlike' Nuremberg rallies - 'the sea of red
> flags, the marching up during the roll of drums and music by Wagner,
> preferably in darkness, when it is easier to put an audience in a
> solemn, emotionally charged mood...all this was as if in a perfectly
> staged Wagner opera, with the Reich chancellor's entrance and speech
> as the big climax' (Hamann).
That's a very dubious assertion. In fact, to judge by surviving footage
of the Nuremberg rallies, there was almost no Wagner played during them,
but chiefly the Nazis' special breed of tinpot marches; in "Triumph of
the Will", for example, I remember no more than the Meistersinger III
prelude, not part of the ceremony itself, and at one brief moment the
Nibelungen March, an arrangement of leitmotifs which bears about the
same relation to Wagner as Kismet does to Prince Igor. Hitler and his
crew seem to have developed the night-meeting technique by trial and
error; his original meetings were in the daytime, and not very
successful, so he began experimenting with presentation and
theatricality. This can be linked to Wagner only by lazy assumption, and
cannot be justified in detail. Wagner's stage was rarely dark in those
days, and rarely crowded; the emotional charge very often derives from
no more than two characters at a time. The "big bow-wow" choral moments
in works like Meistersinger and Gotterdammerung are a tiny proportion of
the works in question, and generally good-humoured or reverent. There is
nothing, apart perhaps from Lohengrin, which has the slightest
resemblance to a political rally, or could be twisted to resemble it.
How can one relate "the sea of red flags" to Wagner, or the speech etc?
It sounds to me much more as if it was copied from Soviet techniques.
> In 1883 Schonerer highjacked Wagner (who'd recently died) and turned
> a memorial ceremony in to a powerful nationalistic political rally. A
> few years on, and the new Richard Wagner Association in Vienna was a
> hotbed of anti-Semitism and Germanic nationalism. Germanic-national
> celebrations were always accompanied by Wagner's music - the great
> School Association celebration in Vienna, as an example, which launched
> with the Rienzi overture and ended with the Meistersinger.
The word, of course, is hijacked. But using snippets of Wagner as
background music does not alone constitute influence; nor was Wagner
dominant in their musical repertoire. When the Nazis wanted a funeral
march, for Heydrich or Rommel for example, it was Beethoven's they
played, not Siegfried's. And while the bombastic fanfare that blared out
of radio broadcasts and concentration-camp loudspeakers in the latter
half of the war is often assumed to have been Wagner's, it was in fact
from Liszt's Les Preludes. With the exception of Hitler, in fact, almost
none of the Nazi hierarchy had any interest in Wagner at all; Goebbels
mouthed about it, but preferred musical comedy. And even Hitler himself
by the war years was listening more to Lehar -- and watching, not the
operas, but "King Kong".
> Wagner's ideas concerning the Jews, expressed in "The work of Art
> of the Future" and "Modern" - were widely adopted by all the
> volkish and pan-Germanic associations in Vienna by 1900. And it was in
> to this hotbed of nationalism and anti-Semitism that young Hitler
> progressed.
Vienna had been a hotbed of anti-semitism long before Wagner ever came
near it, and its character was wholly different from his -- much more
violent and socially exclusive. Viennese anti-semitism was certainly one
of the models for the Nazis, the particularly ghastly mayor of the day
an inspiration to Julius Streicher, but it most certainly did not derive
from Wagner in any way. To say that Wagner's ideas were adopted implies
very definitely that he was in part responsible for this anti-semitic
climate, but the anti-semites of Vienna were people like small
shopkeepers and working-class thugs, semi-literates who would never
dream of reading anything so intellectual and so turgid as Wagner. In
fact their anti-semitism simply reflected the huge prevalence of general
anti-semitism through the German-speaking world, and indeed Europe. As
evidence of this, exactly the same beliefs and doctrines manifested
themselves in France of the same era, where Wagner's influence was
minimal until much later, and even then confined to the intellectual
avant-garde -- yet, as the Dreyfus affair demonstrated, they were
dominant among the army and the government. Are you seriously going to
claim that Wagner "influenced" such a pack of diehard philistines, and
violently anti-German ones at that? Yet they spoke the same nasty
language as the Viennese.
Wagner's ideas were not "adopted", they were co-opted, selectively and
with whatever spin was needed to make them fit, to lend some air of
intellectual respectability, just as the Nazis were to do not long
after.
Again, this is extremely old-fashioned stuff, and relies on taking
Hitler and his acolytes at their world -- an extremely dangerous thing
to do in any circumstances. Read Kershaw and Burleigh for a more
balanced viewpoint. The excellent and surprisingly detailed TV series
"The Nazis -- A Lesson from History", on which Professor Kershaw was the
main adviser, never once mentions Wagner. The people who have swallowed
the "influence" claim are, it seems, people who've never read any of
Wagner's stuff themselves -- for which in other circumstances I wouldn't
blame them. But they have been content to make these sweeping claims
without ever actually showing any actual link between any writing of
Wagner's and any action of Hitler's. Can you?
> As stated in my original post, it is nonsense to look at an artist in
> isolation from his or her times, from the society that helps to form
> them, and the attitudes and values prevailing within that society.
> For good or bad, Richard Wagner was very much a product of his age.
> Those ideas of his we describe as 'extreme' found very fertile soil
> indeed within the context of the society around him.
To put things that way is to take as a given a very questionable
assumption -- that Wagner's ideas had any serious continuity at all. In
fact, the ideas that did acquire some influence, albeit limited, were
not his but those of the Bayreuth circle which formed after his death,
composed of people such as Chamberlain who had never in fact met him,
and developed their own lunacies quite independently of his. Their ideas
resemble his only in hostility to Jews; theirs, though, was of a very
different character, though even so not of Nazi proportions. But even
this influence was limited, because the Bayreuth set were distrusted as
cosmopolitan intellectuals by the poorly educated Nazis -- cf Frederick
Spotts' history of Bayreuth. Only Hitler's personal interest and his
links with Winifred saved Bayreuth from being incorporated into the
party machine, as Goebbels repeatedly schemed to.
It would be much truer and less tendentious to say that Wagner's ideas
were spawned by that fertile soil in the first place, among a horde of
others, and that compared to those of the average run of German opinion,
in particular the workers and the ruling classes, they were unusually
moderate. Only the more educated and cosmopolitan people of his day were
abandoning their established anti-semitism, and they were in a minority.
Wagner was coopted by the Nazis long after his death; but to assume he
was some kind of proto-Nazi is to accept their propaganda at face value,
and to ignore the facts.
Richard Loeb
news:200608080...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk...
Every nasty cloud does have a silver (or shall a say golden lining) but one
of the by products of this guys postings (which I skim over to get to the
good stuff) have been the really wonderful postings by Michael Scott,
Derrick and others which are a Nibeling's Horde of valuable information
regarding Wagner, his thoughts and relationships. Enough for a dissertation
here!!!!! Richard
>
L.P. Beria
<loe...@comcast.net> wrote:
>Every nasty cloud does have a silver (or shall a say golden lining) but one
>of the by products of this guys postings (which I skim over to get to the
>good stuff) have been the really wonderful postings by Michael Scott,
>Derrick and others which are a Nibeling's Horde of valuable information
>regarding Wagner, his thoughts and relationships. Enough for a dissertation
>here!!!!! Richard
You're a Jew, Loeb. You can convert to Scientology and you would still
be a Jew. The enthusiasm you express for Shabbos Goy Rohan's
manipulations and historical memory lapses are typically Jewish.
Loeb, one of President Abe Lincoln's most memorable statements about
the government of the United States was to the effect that it is able
to fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all
of the time, but that it can't hope to fool all of the people all of
the time.
And one of the most amusing aspects of the situation in this newsgroup
is the extent to which the Jews and their Shabbos Goyim, collaborating
with one another, are able to deceive most of the people all the time.
In past posts I've given a number of examples of this deceit,
especially with regard to race, and Wagner's innermost feelings about
miscegenation, as proven beyond dispute by his very own words.
Where the Jews and their Shabbos Goyim are concerned, the deceit works
at two levels. First there is the false portrayal of reality, and then
the pushing of certain "progressive" ideas.
In other words, there are two distinct ways in which the public is
fooled by the Jews and the Rohans of the world.
The first is the emphasis on history and news which fits the
propaganda themes, and the blackout of history and news which doesn't
fit.
The second is to distort the history and news that they *are* willing
to risk talking about.
They applied this age-old propaganda technique in the case of the
school shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.
Perhaps you remember that? The Jews and the Rohans deliberately were
trying to create the impression in the minds of the public that the
two boys who did the shooting were "racists" deliberately targeting
Blacks and that they were "neo-Nazis" who spoke German to each other
and chose Adolf Hitler's birthday for the shooting.
The day after the shooting, newscaster Tom Brokaw interviewed for the
NBC Nightly News exactly one parent of the 13 slain students, and that
was the father of the one Black who was shot. Brokaw didn't tell us
that only one Black was shot, of course, but he spoke only of this one
Black victim. He spoke of none of the 12 White victims. He
deliberately prolonged the false impression that most of the victims
were Black. He and other media spokesmen also continued to hint that
the boys were "neo-Nazis," even though they knew that one of the boys,
Dylan Klebold, was a Jew. They didn't say anything about Klebold's
Jewishness to the public, of course.
Once the Jews and the Rohans had planted the idea in the minds of the
public that the two killers were "racists" and "neo-Nazis," the
subsequent revelation that all except one of the victims were White
didn't change this impression. Preachers and politicians were still
giving us tearful little sermons about "ending the hate" in connection
with what happened at Columbine High School. Guilt-stricken White
women were still becoming hysterical for the television cameras and
babbling about how "hate" and "racism" were responsible. Jewish
organizations such as the ADL used the confusion as an opportunity to
push for their pet project, which is censoring the Internet to halt
the propagation of what they define as "hate."
Well, one bit of news which Tom Brokaw and the other network spokesmen
forgot to mention was what the Columbine killers talked about on the
Internet. One would think that it would be wonderful grist for Rohan's
propaganda mill, showing the public the "racist" ravings on the
Internet of the two "neo-Nazi" killers. But Brokaw and the others were
silent on the subject. A little digging, however was enough to turn up
the following material from Eric Harris's web site. "You know what I
hate?," Harris wrote, "Racism!... Don't let me catch you making fun of
someone just because they are a different color." Harris also wrote
that people who don't like, "blacks, Asians, Mexicans or people from
any other country or race besides white-American" should "have their
arms ripped off" and be burned. All the indications are that the
killers, far from being the Politically Incorrect independent thinkers
the Jews and their Rohans would have us believe they were, actually
were strict conformists to the Jewish party line on racial matters.
Despite this reality, of a Jewish killer and a partner who raved on
the Internet about wanting to "rip the arms off" racists, the Jewa and
their Rohans were able to use the Columbine High School tragedy to
fool a substantial part of the public into believing that the two
killers were White racists and "neo-Nazis." They were able to fool the
public because they already had fooled the public so often in the past
that they had the public conditioned to accept anything which fit the
notion that White racists and "neo-Nazis" are dangerous and are likely
to kill their neighbors, and that when someone does kill his
neighbors, the chances are that he is a White racist or a "neo-Nazi."
That's why we need more laws to keep guns out of the hands of White
racists and to keep "neo-Nazis" off the Internet.
One can imagine people like Rohan and Everett and Loeb rubbing their
hands and laughing among themselves at how easy it has been to fool
most of the people in this matter. And they're still busy keeping the
people fooled about the Colorado shootings. Dozens of Jewish
publications still are commenting about these shootings, and every one
of them is deliberately deceptive. An example that I have in front of
me now is the May 24 issue of The Jerusalem Report, which attempts to
use the shootings to build public support for censoring the Internet.
Without ever mentioning Klebold's Jewishness or the Politically
Correct tone of Harris's anti-racist web site, The Jerusalem Report
refers to "the racist and Nazi undertones" of the shootings, and
suggests that they may have been inspired by "extremist" Internet
sites such as that of National Vanguard. That sort of breathtakingly
brazen lying is what the Jews proudly call "chutzpah."
If one reads more of the ravings on Eric Harris's web site, it becomes
clear that he had a badly impaired grip on reality. He apparently had
watched so much television that he really couldn't distinguish between
normal social behavior in the real world and the sort of sociopathic
behavior portrayed by the Jews on television in thousands of films.
Harris babbles on narcissistically about killing anybody who won't let
him do whatever he likes:
"My belief is that if I say something, it goes. I am the law. If
you don't like it you die. If I don't like you or I don't like what
you want me to do, you die."
When the Jews realized, many years ago, that George Bush could become
a useful tool for them, they decided to fool the American people as to
what sort of man he is, and they have succeeded in keeping most of
them fooled most of the time.
The principal difference between Geirge Bush and Eric Harris, it
seems, is that Harris only had a shotgun, while Bush has cruise
missiles and cluster bombs -- which brings us to another area where
the Jews and the Rohans have been successful in keeping most of the
people fooled, and that's Mr. Bush's murderous war to "bring democracy
to Iraq." The Jews and the Rohans have lied about every aspect of the
war: about the reasons for beginning the war, about the American
conduct of the bombing campaign, about the effects of the war on the
Iraqi people, and just about everything else. And again they have
succeeded in fooling most of the people.
The facts about the war are leaking out, but they're not getting to
most of the people. Most of the people don't get any national or
international news which doesn't come from a network television
program or a Jewish owned newspaper, and that means that the Jews and
the Rohans are able to keep most of them fooled all the time.
kate@musicnet
Mike Scott Rohan wrote:
(lots of interesting stuff snipped for the sake of brevity)
Hitler's love of Wagner's opera is referred to in many
contemporaneous sources (see below). He saw these works not only as a
supreme musical experience, but the pulsing heart of his vision of a
romantic mythological Germany, glorious in the past and destined to be
greater in the future. His was an era of half-digested Darwinist
interpretation, the idea that might makes right, and Wagner struck
every kind of chord in the receptive Hitler. Wagner's life, the
triumph of initially unappreciated genius over lesser men of
conventional tastes; Wagner's belief that emotion and intuition are
superior to reason, that genius has all rights and mediocrity none; his
racism, Valhalla for Nordic warriors falling in splendid battle, and
his anti-Semitic summation: "I hold the Jewish race to be the born
enemy of pure humanity and everything noble in man." (Fest,
'Hitler' / Bracelen Flood 'Hitler: the path to power').
During the Great War Hitler read Nietzsche (Lugauer statement, Toland
papers) and had a well thumbed copy of 'The World as Will and Idea"
by Schopenhauer. His reading was intense. But it was also selective,
and he discarded everything that could not help 'in the battle of
life'. Hence from Nietzsche he took only the concept that decadent
western civilisation must be swept away for the new self-willed heroic
superman - 'this meshed with what he chose to extract from the life
and ideas of Wagner.'
Ernst Hanfstaengl recounted one evening in 1923 when a nervous Hitler
(he was to give evidence the following day at a political trial) asked
him to play the piano to calm him. At first he played Bach, but this
was no good. Then:
"I started the prelude to the 'Meistersinger'. This was it. This
was Hitler's meat. He knew the thing exactly by heart and could
whistle every note of it in a curious penetrating vibrato, but
completely in tune...He really had an excellent feeling for the spirit
of the music, certainly as good as many a conductor. This music
affected him physically and by the time I had crashed through the
finale he was in splendid spirits, all his worries gone."
(Hanfstaengl interview, Toland papers)
He goes on to state:
"We had innumerable sessions together...it always had to be Wagner,
'Meistersinger, 'Tristan und Isolde', and 'Lohengrin'. I must
have played them hundreds of times and he never grew tired of
listening. He had a very genuine knowledge and appreciation of
Wagner's music and ideas which he had picked up somewhere, probably
in his Vienna days, long before I knew him." (Ibid)
While it is fact that some of August Kubizek's memoir of the young
Hitler is questionable - his version of Hitler's first encountering
Wagner's 'Rienzi' and the effect it had on him was confirmed by
Hitler himself in conversations with Frau Winifred Wagner in July 1939.
This was in Bayreuth where Kubizek and Hitler had just been reunited.
Over diner Hitler recounted the story and claimed 'That was the hour
it all began.' (Winifred Wagner).
Julius Schaub confirmed that it was lines from 'Rienzi' that Hitler
wanted engraved on his mausoleum after his death.
One could go on and on. There are a number of entries in Gobbles
diaries about Hitler's knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, Richard
Wagner, his operas and ideas, for example: 'Tagebucher' pt 1, vol.2
19th Nov. 1935. It certainly isn't worth detailing them all here.
Regarding Kubizek's comments on Hitler and 'Wieland' it rings
true - he quite clearly states Hitler's shortcomings as a musician.
As a youth Hitler had been a member of the choir at Lambach for some
time (as an adult he could still sing the Mozart masses from memory)
and he had piano lessons for a period of four months (statement by
Paula Hitler). Hitler had ego and enthusiasm enough (with Kubizek's
help) to give it a go, but Kubizek's comments are perhaps less than
flattering and the project fizzled out.
So maybe, maybe not (It is the unpublished part of Kubizek's memoir
that was commissioned by the NSDAP).
The knowledge acquired in Vienna most certainly influenced the
Nuremberg conventions. In 1908 Hitler (age 18) went to the opera to
introduce himself to Alfred Roller. He wanted to assist in set design
as an artist, but his courage failed him and he went away. (Eduard
Frauenfeld). He studied set design, costumes, lighting (later his
knowledge surprised many opera directors). According to Albert Speer,
Hitler as Reich Chancellor still made set design drawings for Wagner
operas, including sketches for every scene in 'Ring of the
Nibelungs'.
Speer's "domes of light" (at Nuremberg) were a simple continuance
of Roller's "direction of light" incorporating the "sea of red
flags" (Albert Speer / Brigitte Hamann).
Again, according to Hamann: "The spirited 'Rienzi' overture
became the secret anthem of the Third Reich, well known as the
introduction to the Nuremberg party conventions."
Certainly Wagner's ideas influenced Hitler - both directly and
second hand via other volkish groups in Vienna, which in turn had also
been influenced by them. A double whammy, so to speak. Wagner did not
make Hitler. Some of his ideas, however, did influence him - to say
otherwise is to fly in the face of lots of contemporaneous evidence.
These ideas also carried weight with a number of prominent Nazis:
Wagner's phase "der plastische Damon des verfalls der Menscheit"
(plastic demon of the decay of humanity) used in reference to the Jews
had a particularly fear-inspiring and menacing ring to it as
acknowledged by Rosenberg (Alfred Rosenberg, 'Die Protokolle der
Weisen von Zion und die judische Weltpolitik'). A number of
Wagner's ideas and phrases rattle about like loose marbles in this
work. As they do in Bruno Malitz, 'Die Leibesuebungen in der
nationalsozialistischen Idee', published in 1934 - the destruction of
the Jews is not for national socialism but for Germany: "I hold the
Jewish race to be the born enemy of pure humanity and everything noble
in man," from Wagner, again, as a source for the necessity of this
destruction, and a validation of it.
I accept that in coining his many anti-Semitic phases and ideas, Wagner
had no idea of how they might eventually be interpreted and used by
others. How could he? But he did generate these unpleasant (and
embarrassing for the modern Wagnerite) gems of hatred. Acclaimed as a
genius, the greatest musical dramatist, etc, Wagner's name could not
fail to add a certain validity to the Nazi philosophy and Weltpolitik.
Pure conjecture I know, but I can't help feeling Wagner, had he lived
so long, might well have been happy under the new Third Reich -
he'd already had one ruler in the palm of his hand, why not a German
Chancellor as well? Long term, I suspect this would cease to be the
case - as it was for so many others.
I have heard Wagner described as a "Talented Sociopath" but I think
"Talented" doesn't do justice to the man's abilities. I'm
often reminded of that now ancient radio talk by Deems Taylor entitled
"A MONSTER":
Basically Taylor starts out explaining Wagner was the most important
person in the world - in his own eyes! He was the only person who
truly existed in his opinion. "He was the greatest dramatist in the
world, one of the greatest thinkers, and one of the greatest
composers...."
"He was convinced the world owed him a living. In support of this he
borrowed money from everybody who was good for a loan - men, women,
friends or strangers."
Taylor then lamented he could find no record of repayments, other than
where there existed a legal claim for the money.
"An endless procession of women marches through his life. His first
wife spent twenty years enduring and forgiving his infidelities. His
second wife had been the wife of his most devoted friend and admirer,
from whom he stole her. And even while he was trying to persuade her to
leave her first husband he was writing to a friend to inquire whether
he could suggest some wealthy woman - any wealthy woman - whom he
could marry for her money!"
So, what a piece of work Wagner was, eh? But Taylor concludes this is
of minor importance (and I would concur with this 100%). Wagner had the
right to be the way he was because:
"He was one of the worlds greatest dramatists; he was a great
thinker; he was one of the most stupendous musical geniuses that, up
till now, the world has ever seen...What if he was faithless to his
friends and to his wives? He had one mistress to whom he was faithful
to the day of his death: Music!"
Taylor explains that not a line of his music could have been conceived
by "a little mind" even his worse mistakes contain greatness.
"The miracle is that what he did in the little space of 70 years
could have been done at all, even by a great genius. Is it any wonder
that he had no time to be a man?"
All this talk of Wagner and Hitler puts me in mind of that strange
evening on 1st June 1939. Hitler welcomed the Yugoslavian Prince Regent
and his wife to Berlin. There followed a huge military parade and a
sparkling banquet after which they were escorted to the Prussian State
Opera house for a gala performance of Wagner's 'Meistersinger'.
The performance did not go well, and led to Hitler swearing on his life
to Winifred Wagner that Herbert von Karajan (31 years) would never be
permitted to conduct at Bayreuth. Poor von Karajan conducting as he
always did without a score lost his place and faltered. The singer's
voice died away. The orchestra fell silent. Finally the curtain had to
be lowered briefly to allow von Karajan to get his act together.
An embarrassing moment indeed, but ultimately not one that damaged von
Karajan's career too much. Unfortunately Wagner's posthumous links
to the same regime have damaged his reputation badly in the eyes of
many - which, all in all, is a shame.
Derrick Everett
> The message <1154973237.5...@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com> from
> "kate@musicnet" <waggaw...@yahoo.com.au> contains these words:
>
>> Wagner's ideas concerning the Jews, expressed in "The work of Art of
>> the Future" and "Modern" - were widely adopted by all the volkish and
>> pan-Germanic associations in Vienna by 1900. And it was in to this
>> hotbed of nationalism and anti-Semitism that young Hitler progressed.
>
>
There are no anti-Semitic statements in 'The Work of Art of the Future',
or in anything else that Wagner published before 1850. The essay does not
contain any reference, direct or indirect, to Jews or Judaism.
OTOH 'Modern', which Wagner wrote for the 'Blätter' in 1878, is a bad-
tempered, cranky rant about Jews, journalists and cosmopolitans.
Although it is certain that Wagner was a rabid anti-Semite by 1878, there
is no reason to believe that he had developed an anti-Semitic attitude by
1849. It was only in the following year, when Wagner decided that
Meyerbeer was working against him, that he burned his bridges not only
with Meyerbeer but with all Jewish musicians and artists. During the
troubled year in Munich this anti-Semitic attitude was reinforced by the
opposition he met from the Munich newspapers; after which Wagner became
increasingly paranoid, believing that the "Jews and Jesuits" were out to
get him. If they were, then it was his own fault.
--
Derrick Everett
====== Writing from 59°54'N 10°37'E =======
http://home.c2i.net/monsalvat/index.htm
http://home.c2i.net/monsalvat/wagnerfaq.htm
kate@musicnet
Derrick Everett wrote:
> On Tue, 08 Aug 2006 01:43:46 +0100, Mike Scott Rohan wrote:
>
> > The message <1154973237.5...@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com> from
> > "kate@musicnet" <waggaw...@yahoo.com.au> contains these words:
> >
> >> Wagner's ideas concerning the Jews, expressed in "The work of Art of
> >> the Future" and "Modern" - were widely adopted by all the volkish and
> >> pan-Germanic associations in Vienna by 1900. And it was in to this
> >> hotbed of nationalism and anti-Semitism that young Hitler progressed.
> >
> >
> There are no anti-Semitic statements in 'The Work of Art of the Future',
> or in anything else that Wagner published before 1850. The essay does not
> contain any reference, direct or indirect, to Jews or Judaism.
I do beg your pardon - but having recently reread, "The Work of Art of
the Future" I noted that Richard Wagner used the term "Jewish
Modernism", calling it:
"something quite miserable and very dangerous, especially for us
Germans."
He went on to argue quite clearly that it would continue to be
destructive: "until all original dispositions of its German
contemporaries are entirely ruined."
I'm quoting from Wagner, "Gesammelte Werke", vol 8, p111.
Perhaps you do not see these comments as anti-Semitic? Or perhaps
there's a problem with my translation - or maybe your edition's been
"sanitised"?
On the other hand, perhaps you do see this comment as a genuine critic
of "Jewish Modernism" in art and thus not offensive?
Either way, I apologise if I've misled or given offence - but that's
what's here in front of me right now, and I've just double checked it!
On the question of Wagner's anti-Semitism, I'm sure (but can't
prove it) that it started or became more pronounced in 1836 / 37 after
the bankruptcy of the theatre in Magdeburg and during his time in
Konigsberg - rehearsing the chorus in Mayerbeer's operas he learned
of the massive sums of money they were earning for the composer off in
Paris- this while Wagner was living hand to mouth! Must have rankled,
must have!
Richard Partridge
mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk, wrote the following:
[long snip]
>
> It would be much truer and less tendentious to say that Wagner's ideas
> were spawned by that fertile soil in the first place, among a horde of
> others, and that compared to those of the average run of German opinion,
> in particular the workers and the ruling classes, they were unusually
> moderate. Only the more educated and cosmopolitan people of his day were
> abandoning their established anti-semitism, and they were in a minority.
> Wagner was coopted by the Nazis long after his death; but to assume he
> was some kind of proto-Nazi is to accept their propaganda at face value,
> and to ignore the facts.
I think that sums it up beautifully.
Dick Partridge
kate@musicnet
Richard Partridge wrote:
>to ignore the facts.
>
> I think that sums it up beautifully.
>
>
> Dick Partridge
And sadly that is maybe the problem - turning away from the "facts"?
Why is it "beautiful? It has led to an infestation of Homers in this
newsgroup! I beg everyones pardon, but how is ignoring the facts
"beautiful?"
Look at sources, yes; look at facts no matter how difficult they may be
to take, yes - but anything else, and you deserve what you get!
Jeff
<waggaw...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
>Derrick Everett wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 08 Aug 2006 01:43:46 +0100, Mike Scott Rohan wrote:
>>
>> > The message <1154973237.5...@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com> from
>> > "kate@musicnet" <waggaw...@yahoo.com.au> contains these words:
>> >
>> >> Wagner's ideas concerning the Jews, expressed in "The work of Art of
>> >> the Future" and "Modern" - were widely adopted by all the volkish and
>> >> pan-Germanic associations in Vienna by 1900. And it was in to this
>> >> hotbed of nationalism and anti-Semitism that young Hitler progressed.
>> >
>> >
>> There are no anti-Semitic statements in 'The Work of Art of the Future',
>> or in anything else that Wagner published before 1850. The essay does not
>> contain any reference, direct or indirect, to Jews or Judaism.
>
>I do beg your pardon - but having recently reread, "The Work of Art of
>the Future" I noted that Richard Wagner used the term "Jewish
>Modernism", calling it:
>
>"something quite miserable and very dangerous, especially for us
>Germans."
>
>He went on to argue quite clearly that it would continue to be
>destructive: "until all original dispositions of its German
>contemporaries are entirely ruined."
>
>I'm quoting from Wagner, "Gesammelte Werke", vol 8, p111.
>
I have to give you credit. You are *not* a liar. You have never told a
lie in this newsgroup, which puts you head and shoulders above Everett
and Rohan.
Sure, you spin the facts, share the guilt, and hog the virtue - but
for a Jew, you are an honorable person.
Mike Scott Rohan
from "kate@musicnet" <waggaw...@yahoo.com.au> contains these words:
> Richard Partridge wrote:
Actually racist oafs are relatively rare in this group. We did have one
of the US Nazi Party high-ups a few years back, but he was too far up
his own, er, concepts to communicate and ended up ranting at himself, or
so it appeared. (I didn't have a killfile in those days, so he was
harder to avoid.) We had, too, a devious pseudo-historian who claimed to
hate Hitler while actually boosting the myth, until one of our number
uncovered him as a fellow-traveller of David Irving. Much more often,
though, we've had self-righteous zealots assuming they were uncovering a
nest of anti-semites, or that we were quite blind to our beloved hero's
nastier side. We even had one or two nutcases claiming to be Holocaust
survivors who'd witnessed the wicked playing of Wagner everywhere to
spur on the SS in their brutalities, but these types became mysteriously
vague when politely asked to specify how or where they'd suffered -- the
more so as we had a genuine Holocaust refugee here already. The more
honest and rational ones had some of their misinformed assumptions set
straight, and they haven't been back.
So, far from leading to an infestation of Homers, the considered and
balanced approach of many on this group -- it isn't uniform, by any
means -- may actually have done some service, and I trust will continue
to do so. You insist on "facts", but, as I and others have shown, you're
extremely selective in your use of them, choosing, perhaps
unconsciously, what will prove your pre-existing assumptions, and
turning away from or minimizing what doesn't. Concentrating on Wagner's
intemperate language, for example, and ignoring his much more temperate
behaviour -- which matters more?
And a couple of posts back you were even claiming we said Wagner wasn't
an anti-semite, which nobody here had claimed or ever would. That wasn't
terribly "factual", was it? No, in your methodology you and the troll
are, I'm afraid, all too similar. He seems to need to believe that
Wagner was an anti-semite of his comic-book Nazi stamp, conspiracy
theory and all, and has evidently slanted his reading to prove it.
Wherever you're coming from -- and giving you the benefit of the doubt
that you're not the troll in one of his cod-reasonable guises -- you are
aiming for the same result. But to reach it you will have to ignore a
great many inconsistencies in Wagner himself; the dubious or downright
fraudulent quality of many of the sources involved -- always, curiously,
the ones that would make Wagner a Nazi influence!; the way in which many
lesser characters, from Chamberlain to Goebbels, piggybacked their ideas
on the Wagner name and image, and how much those ideas differed from
his; and the contrasting evidence, Wagner's behaviour towards Jews, his
more temperate attitudes and the deep affection and admiration he
managed to inspire in his Jewish friends, many of them solid worldly men
not given to swallow an insult lightly. You haven't addressed these,
because you can't; yet until you account for them, you cannot take your
own sequence of "facts" to the conclusion you seek.
Cheers,
Mike
Mike Scott Rohan
from "kate@musicnet" <waggaw...@yahoo.com.au> contains these words:
> Mike Scott Rohan wrote:
> (lots of interesting stuff snipped for the sake of brevity)
> Hitler's love of Wagner's opera is referred to in many
> contemporaneous sources (see below). He saw these works not only as a
> supreme musical experience, but the pulsing heart of his vision of a
> romantic mythological Germany, glorious in the past and destined to be
> greater in the future. His was an era of half-digested Darwinist
> interpretation, the idea that might makes right, and Wagner struck
> every kind of chord in the receptive Hitler.
Now this, I'm afraid, is an example of why you're not a historian. You
leap wildly between ideas on the basis of a purely conjectural
connection. Yes, Hitler loved Wagner opera. So what? So did and do lots
of people who weren't anti-Semitic megalomaniacs. If you're going to
prove anything by that, therefore, you have to show why Hitler was so
specially affected. And when we look more closely, we discover that by
far Hitler's favourite in his formative years was "Tristan" -- nothing
to do with mythological Germany, for a start, nothing to do with German
glory and future greatness, nothing to do with "might makes right",
nothing to do with world domination, but a great deal to do with those
prime teenage obsessions morbid alienation, vague transcendence and
consuming sexual yearnings.
More yet -- once we get past the caricature stage, we find that in fact
Hitler was not that attracted or inspired by the altgermanisch,
mythological aspects of Wagner. As Frederick Spotts points out in
"Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics", he rather despised the
altgermanisch paraphernalia so many of his party affected (though from
sources other than Wagner). Hitler was a modernizer, a futurist by
taste, preferring the kind of clean-lined "hygienic" visions H.G.Wells
was so fond of (indeed, it was no accident Wells and others of his kind
admired him...at first). So your assumption is demonstrably wrong there
also.
In fact one would be very hard put to it to find anything anywhere in
Wagner's operas that genuinely suggests "might makes right", and this is
understandable because the least aquaintance with his ideas, written and
otherwise, show that he believed the exact opposite. It's one of the
principal themes of the Ring; Gurnemanz inveighs against force in
Parsifal; and so on. And where is the "half-digested Darwinism" in
Wagner? It did come to affect German intellectualism -- Stephen Jay
Gould wrote a good article about this -- but that was well after
Wagner's time, the next generation. But even in considering that you
don't show how it's supposed to be a Wagner-Hitler link; and that
omission is crucial. Unless you support it, it's a statement of the same
order as an anti-semitic rant.
Wagner's life, the
> triumph of initially unappreciated genius over lesser men of
> conventional tastes; Wagner's belief that emotion and intuition are
> superior to reason, that genius has all rights and mediocrity none; his
> racism, Valhalla for Nordic warriors falling in splendid battle, and
> his anti-Semitic summation: "I hold the Jewish race to be the born
> enemy of pure humanity and everything noble in man." (Fest,
> 'Hitler' / Bracelen Flood 'Hitler: the path to power').
> During the Great War Hitler read Nietzsche (Lugauer statement, Toland
> papers) and had a well thumbed copy of 'The World as Will and Idea"
> by Schopenhauer. His reading was intense. But it was also selective,
> and he discarded everything that could not help 'in the battle of
> life'. Hence from Nietzsche he took only the concept that decadent
> western civilisation must be swept away for the new self-willed heroic
> superman - 'this meshed with what he chose to extract from the life
> and ideas of Wagner.'
Hitler hagiography claimed that he read many things; that was how the
Nazi machine strive to portray him, as a thinker and visionary rather
than a cracked and half-educated drifter with a gift for crude oratory.
But evidence that he actually did, is lacking -- no substantial use of
ideas, arguments or concepts. Accounts dating from the Nazi years are by
definition unreliable, if not supported by some indications closer to
Hitler; and there aren't any. Furthermore he was an autodidact, reading
without discipline, guidance and background; so even if he did glance
through any of these thinkers there is no guarantee that he extracted
anything valid or even wholly understood from them, selectively or
otherwise. Such ideas or quotations as there are could very easily have
come from "digest" accounts, in newspapers, for example, or simply
talking to people; there isn't enough substance to relate them to real
thought. What's more, we know his writings were "edited" by more
literate supporters such as Hanfstaengl, from, by all accounts, an
inchoate, incoherent mass -- and given Hitler's unedited style, when it
appears, that is easy to believe. So they may have popped the references
in, or "improved" them, as they saw fit.
> Ernst Hanfstaengl recounted one evening in 1923 when a nervous Hitler
> (he was to give evidence the following day at a political trial) asked
> him to play the piano to calm him. At first he played Bach, but this
> was no good. Then:
{snip}
> So maybe, maybe not (It is the unpublished part of Kubizek's memoir
> that was commissioned by the NSDAP).
Again, you're missing the point. Anyone knows Hitler was fond of Wagner,
and certainly fond of showing off his knowledge of singers etc. But none
of this proves that Wagner was any substantial influence upon him. You
have to show *how* that influence is supposed to have acted -- that's
the first comment you'd get if this were a college essay.
Mere obsession with something is relevant only if you can show how it
shaped someone's actions; and your idea of the something in this case is
so unreal and received that the connection can't be made. You are
reasoning back from Hitler the megalomaniac to elements you believe
exist in Wagner, and saying "this is where he got it all". But the
"all" is not in fact present in Wagner, only in the caricature version
of him that became fashionable in the Hitler era, not before. When one
looks at Wagner as he was, there's less and less there that could have
affected Hitler at a formative stage. Even the anti-semitism is
different, nasty enough in language but much milder in its sentiments
and not in fact based on any concept of racial purity, superiority or
conspiracy. At the time Hitler was most obsessed with Wagner, anyway, he
wasn't in fact anti-semitic to any discernible extent; he seems to have
picked it up, possibly from street orators in Vienna and Munich, in the
days after WWI, probably as a handy explanation for the traumatic
defeat, but perhaps simply as a handy vote-winner he later came to
believe.
What's more, there is ample evidence that Hitler was never, by nature,
intellectually inclined enough to be so influenced. He was never a
consistent, logical or even orderly thinker, let alone a dedicated
reader. Even at the height of his power he was a constant improviser, a
vague inspirer who refused to consider details, a manipulator, a divider
rather than an organizer, an idle man who rose at noon or two o'clock
and did the minimum of work, reading little more than the newspaper and
that briefly. He preferred to walk, chat, play music or pore over
architectural fantasies. In other words, very much the drifter he'd
been. Are we to believe he'd had intellectual habits of serious reading
then, that he somehow later lost? That he somehow absorbed all this
difficult stuff back then, when his access to books was limited, and
never touched it again when he had it all on tap?
So instead of a visionary dictator's Wanderjahre absorbing influences to
become a man of destiny, we find something much more mundane and
comprehensible -- a dreamer, almost incapable of any intellectual effort
even in areas like art and architecture for which he had some talent,
perhaps picking up a smattering of knowledge, but revealing nothing
substantial. Far more likely that his intellectual pretensions were
boosted as other dictators' have been -- Stalin, Mao, Ceaucescu -- by
his party's political machine; and there is evidence that this was done,
in Mein Kampf and elsewhere.
> The knowledge acquired in Vienna most certainly influenced the
> Nuremberg conventions. In 1908 Hitler (age 18) went to the opera to
> introduce himself to Alfred Roller. He wanted to assist in set design
> as an artist, but his courage failed him and he went away. (Eduard
> Frauenfeld). He studied set design, costumes, lighting (later his
> knowledge surprised many opera directors). According to Albert Speer,
> Hitler as Reich Chancellor still made set design drawings for Wagner
> operas, including sketches for every scene in 'Ring of the
> Nibelungs'.
> Speer's "domes of light" (at Nuremberg) were a simple continuance
> of Roller's "direction of light" incorporating the "sea of red
> flags" (Albert Speer / Brigitte Hamann).
Again, you're extrapolating without support -- assuming, for example,
that Hitler's interest in stagecraft was somehow an indicator of
Wagnerian political influence. How could it have been, exactly? What
does it prove? Are you claiming that his Wagnerian tastes somehow shaped
the Nuremberg rallies -- how, exactly? By being big and noisy? But
that's the comic-book view of Wagner; Wagner is if anything more often
quiet and intimate, and in his life he had no great taste for political
rallies.
You are also assuming as definite that Hitler directed Speer personally
in his creation. Actually Speer, no particular Wagnerian as far as I
know, seems to have operated very much on his own, and the light effects
more probably reflected a worldwide interest in the possibilities of
lighting of that power, which had only become possible since WWI -- very
recently, then. Searchlight batteries became very fashionable for public
events generally, not just such rallies, and was part of futuristic
visions of many kinds. A striking example is the use of searchlight
effects in films of the time by Fritz Lang (determined anti-Nazi, at the
cost of his marriage and career), playing over the buildings of
"Metropolis" and the set-piece launching of the spacecraft in "Frau im
Mond". Their use can hardly be related directly to Hitler unless that's
all you're looking for -- and that still doesn't explain how that's
supposed to demonstrate Wagnerian influence.
> Certainly Wagner's ideas influenced Hitler - both directly and
> second hand via other volkish groups in Vienna, which in turn had also
> been influenced by them. A double whammy, so to speak. Wagner did not
> make Hitler. Some of his ideas, however, did influence him - to say
> otherwise is to fly in the face of lots of contemporaneous evidence.
*What* evidence? You don't seem to be able to tell it from mere
association. And here you suddenly bring in "other volkish groups in
Vienna" which you claim were also Wagner-inspired. How, exactly? In any
case, Hitler distrusted the Viennese and felt much more inspired by
Munich.
> These ideas also carried weight with a number of prominent Nazis:
> Wagner's phase "der plastische Damon des verfalls der Menscheit"
> (plastic demon of the decay of humanity) used in reference to the Jews
> had a particularly fear-inspiring and menacing ring to it as
> acknowledged by Rosenberg (Alfred Rosenberg, 'Die Protokolle der
> Weisen von Zion und die judische Weltpolitik').
Rosenberg despised Wagner! One more card falls out of the house.
A number of
> Wagner's ideas and phrases rattle about like loose marbles in this
> work. As they do in Bruno Malitz, 'Die Leibesuebungen in der
> nationalsozialistischen Idee', published in 1934 - the destruction of
> the Jews is not for national socialism but for Germany: "I hold the
> Jewish race to be the born enemy of pure humanity and everything noble
> in man," from Wagner, again, as a source for the necessity of this
> destruction, and a validation of it.
> I accept that in coining his many anti-Semitic phases and ideas, Wagner
> had no idea of how they might eventually be interpreted and used by
> others. How could he? But he did generate these unpleasant (and
> embarrassing for the modern Wagnerite) gems of hatred. Acclaimed as a
> genius, the greatest musical dramatist, etc, Wagner's name could not
> fail to add a certain validity to the Nazi philosophy and Weltpolitik.
You haven't proved that this very ordinary phrase is in fact a direct
quote. Such buzz-phrases often fly around in propaganda, endlessly
repeated without their origin being realised by the hacks retailing
them. And even assuming every more or less Wagnerian piece of abuse did
in fact originate with him, so what? Nobody denies he was an
anti-semite, but it's not even circumstantial evidence of any real
inspiration. For that you'd have to show something direct, something
substantial -- some place where Wagner produces some concept in which
some specific article of Nazi belief or practise originates. And you
can't, because there isn't any.
> Pure conjecture I know, but I can't help feeling Wagner, had he lived
> so long, might well have been happy under the new Third Reich -
> he'd already had one ruler in the palm of his hand, why not a German
> Chancellor as well? Long term, I suspect this would cease to be the
> case - as it was for so many others.
Conjecture's always suspect, and this one more than most. The Deems
Taylor is the old-fashioned received view of Wagner -- ignoring, for
example, that the poor first wife had deceived Wagner from the start,
pretending her illegitimate daughter was her younger sister (even,
unforgiveably, to the girl herself!) and running off with an officer
within weeks of their marriage, returning to Wagner only when that
officer kicked her out as used goods. Wagner, as many men would not
have, forgave her and took her back, and we have evidence -- surviving
letters --of his affectionate atttitude to her thereafter. Some monster!
She, on the other hand, seems to have been paranoid, demanding and
uncomprehending. While Wagner was no angel, his record is demonstrably
much better than the usual line.
> An embarrassing moment indeed, but ultimately not one that damaged von
> Karajan's career too much. Unfortunately Wagner's posthumous links
> to the same regime have damaged his reputation badly in the eyes of
> many - which, all in all, is a shame.
All the more so because it's rubbish. Karajan's links did exist.
Wagner's existed only in the cracked little minds of the Nazis.
Richard Partridge
following:
Either my message got posted wrongly, or you altered it. "to ignore the
facts" wasn't part of it.
Dick Partridge
kate@musicnet
are not grasping my point - either you're not reading the posts
correctly, or I'm just a poor communicator?
First off, I'm quite surprised that in the same day the resident Nazi
informs all, "I'm quite honourable for a Jew" (Dooh! Springs
immediately to mind, which in itself is a worry), but the public
prosecutor seems to threaten my immediate impeachment on the grounds I
may be a fake holocaust survivor, a neo-Nazi, a personal friend of
David Irving or some such thing. And if this isn't the case, by
implication, I should shutup because I'm helping your "Troll".
So lets try to clear this up:
1. I didn't survive the holocaust
2. I'm not a Nazi, neo or otherwise
3. I'm not Martin Borman
4. I'm not the second gunman from JFK's assassination
5. Nor am I a reincarnation of Friedrich Nietzsche determined to update
"On Wagner"
So:
Mike Scott Rohan wrote:
> The message <1155054347.9...@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
> from "kate@musicnet" <waggaw...@yahoo.com.au> contains these words:
>
>
> > Mike Scott Rohan wrote:
>
> > (lots of interesting stuff snipped for the sake of brevity)
>
> > Hitler's love of Wagner's opera is referred to in many
> > contemporaneous sources (see below). He saw these works not only as a
> > supreme musical experience, but the pulsing heart of his vision of a
> > romantic mythological Germany, glorious in the past and destined to be
> > greater in the future. His was an era of half-digested Darwinist
> > interpretation, the idea that might makes right, and Wagner struck
> > every kind of chord in the receptive Hitler.
>
> Now this, I'm afraid, is an example of why you're not a historian.
But where have I claimed that I am? I'm a writer forced in to
premature retirement due to ill health, in actual fact. But I've
nowhere claimed to be an historian?
>You
> leap wildly between ideas on the basis of a purely conjectural
> connection. Yes, Hitler loved Wagner opera. So what? So did and do lots
> of people who weren't anti-Semitic megalomaniacs. If you're going to
> prove anything by that, therefore, you have to show why Hitler was so
> specially affected. And when we look more closely, we discover that by
> far Hitler's favourite in his formative years was "Tristan" -- nothing
> to do with mythological Germany, for a start, nothing to do with German
> glory and future greatness, nothing to do with "might makes right",
> nothing to do with world domination, but a great deal to do with those
> prime teenage obsessions morbid alienation, vague transcendence and
> consuming sexual yearnings.
Now this is where you have misread my post; firstly you have ignored
the two historians names that I placed at the end of the second
paragraph who were responsible for this quote. If you read it
carefully, you'll note it states "His (Hitler's) age was an era
of half-digested Darwinist -" etc. There's no suggestion here that
"might makes right" came from Wagner? Only that Wagner's music
struck a chord with Hitler - as it did with many nationalists, and
which you acknowledged yourself to be the case in a previous post.
>
> More yet -- once we get past the caricature stage, we find that in fact
> Hitler was not that attracted or inspired by the altgermanisch,
> mythological aspects of Wagner. As Frederick Spotts points out in
> "Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics", he rather despised the
> altgermanisch paraphernalia so many of his party affected (though from
> sources other than Wagner). Hitler was a modernizer, a futurist by
> taste, preferring the kind of clean-lined "hygienic" visions H.G.Wells
> was so fond of (indeed, it was no accident Wells and others of his kind
> admired him...at first). So your assumption is demonstrably wrong there
> also.
I'm sorry to be obtuse, but what assumption is it that you think
I'm trying to make?
>
> In fact one would be very hard put to it to find anything anywhere in
> Wagner's operas that genuinely suggests "might makes right", and this is
> understandable because the least aquaintance with his ideas, written and
> otherwise, show that he believed the exact opposite. It's one of the
> principal themes of the Ring; Gurnemanz inveighs against force in
> Parsifal; and so on. And where is the "half-digested Darwinism" in
> Wagner? It did come to affect German intellectualism -- Stephen Jay
> Gould wrote a good article about this -- but that was well after
> Wagner's time, the next generation. But even in considering that you
> don't show how it's supposed to be a Wagner-Hitler link; and that
> omission is crucial. Unless you support it, it's a statement of the same
> order as an anti-semitic rant.
Again, see my comment above - I have never claimed Wagner believed
"might makes right" you have misread or misinterpreted the original
post.
>
> Wagner's life, the
> > triumph of initially unappreciated genius over lesser men of
> > conventional tastes; Wagner's belief that emotion and intuition are
> > superior to reason, that genius has all rights and mediocrity none; his
> > racism, Valhalla for Nordic warriors falling in splendid battle, and
> > his anti-Semitic summation: "I hold the Jewish race to be the born
> > enemy of pure humanity and everything noble in man." (Fest,
> > 'Hitler' / Bracelen Flood 'Hitler: the path to power').
>
> > During the Great War Hitler read Nietzsche (Lugauer statement, Toland
> > papers) and had a well thumbed copy of 'The World as Will and Idea"
> > by Schopenhauer. His reading was intense. But it was also selective,
> > and he discarded everything that could not help 'in the battle of
> > life'. Hence from Nietzsche he took only the concept that decadent
> > western civilisation must be swept away for the new self-willed heroic
> > superman - 'this meshed with what he chose to extract from the life
> > and ideas of Wagner.'
>
> Hitler hagiography claimed that he read many things; that was how the
> Nazi machine strive to portray him, as a thinker and visionary rather
> than a cracked and half-educated drifter with a gift for crude oratory.
> But evidence that he actually did, is lacking -- no substantial use of
> ideas, arguments or concepts. Accounts dating from the Nazi years are by
> definition unreliable, if not supported by some indications closer to
> Hitler; and there aren't any.
I don't disagree with you on Hitler's reading - read my post
again, he tended to dip and snip in the things he read. Interestingly
you then make out contemporary sources are tainted, so obviously
anything you or I say from this point in time must, by definition be
suspect? I'm not sure I accept that. Also there are post war
confirmations of many of Hitler's habits - but I guess you're
saying these too are unreliable?
Furthermore he was an autodidact, reading
> without discipline, guidance and background; so even if he did glance
> through any of these thinkers there is no guarantee that he extracted
> anything valid or even wholly understood from them, selectively or
> otherwise. Such ideas or quotations as there are could very easily have
> come from "digest" accounts, in newspapers, for example, or simply
> talking to people; there isn't enough substance to relate them to real
> thought.
But of course as you point out, we can't know.
.What's more, we know his writings were "edited" by more
> literate supporters such as Hanfstaengl, from, by all accounts, an
> inchoate, incoherent mass -- and given Hitler's unedited style, when it
> appears, that is easy to believe. So they may have popped the references
> in, or "improved" them, as they saw fit.
But how do know?
> > Ernst Hanfstaengl recounted one evening in 1923 when a nervous Hitler
> > (he was to give evidence the following day at a political trial) asked
> > him to play the piano to calm him. At first he played Bach, but this
> > was no good. Then:
>
> {snip}
>
> > So maybe, maybe not (It is the unpublished part of Kubizek's memoir
> > that was commissioned by the NSDAP).
>
> Again, you're missing the point. Anyone knows Hitler was fond of Wagner,
> and certainly fond of showing off his knowledge of singers etc. But none
> of this proves that Wagner was any substantial influence upon him. You
> have to show *how* that influence is supposed to have acted -- that's
> the first comment you'd get if this were a college essay.
It isn't a college essay - this is a newsgroup used for recreational
purposes, relax and take it easy!
And this is where we hit the crux of the matter - I have made no such
claim! Reread my posts. Where have I stated Wagner was a "substantial
influence on him"? All I stated was Wagner was an influence on Hitler
- I also stated quite clearly "Wagner did not make Hitler". I'm
sure Hitler and the NSDAP would have happened with or without
Wagner's existence.
>
> Mere obsession with something is relevant only if you can show how it
> shaped someone's actions; and your idea of the something in this case is
> so unreal and received that the connection can't be made. You are
> reasoning back from Hitler the megalomaniac to elements you believe
> exist in Wagner, and saying "this is where he got it all".
Again, where exactly have I said this? You are reading something in to
the post I didn't intend (and I'm not sure I put there?).
>But the
> "all" is not in fact present in Wagner, only in the caricature version
> of him that became fashionable in the Hitler era, not before. When one
> looks at Wagner as he was, there's less and less there that could have
> affected Hitler at a formative stage. Even the anti-semitism is
> different, nasty enough in language but much milder in its sentiments
> and not in fact based on any concept of racial purity, superiority or
> conspiracy. At the time Hitler was most obsessed with Wagner, anyway, he
> wasn't in fact anti-semitic to any discernible extent; he seems to have
> picked it up, possibly from street orators in Vienna and Munich, in the
> days after WWI, probably as a handy explanation for the traumatic
> defeat, but perhaps simply as a handy vote-winner he later came to
> believe.
How can we really know any of this, if the contemporary sources are
tainted? I have to say even Wagner's "milder" anti-Semitism would
earn him a period in jail in most of the countries in Europe today. Can
there really be mild race hate, for example? Is that seriously what you
are suggesting here?
>
> What's more, there is ample evidence that Hitler was never, by nature,
> intellectually inclined enough to be so influenced. He was never a
> consistent, logical or even orderly thinker, let alone a dedicated
> reader. Even at the height of his power he was a constant improviser, a
> vague inspirer who refused to consider details,
I wouldn't disagree. Didn't I suggest he was attracted by the idea
of emotion over reason?
>
> So instead of a visionary dictator's Wanderjahre absorbing influences to
> become a man of destiny, we find something much more mundane and
> comprehensible -- a dreamer, almost incapable of any intellectual effort
> even in areas like art and architecture for which he had some talent,
> perhaps picking up a smattering of knowledge, but revealing nothing
> substantial. Far more likely that his intellectual pretensions were
> boosted as other dictators' have been -- Stalin, Mao, Ceaucescu -- by
> his party's political machine; and there is evidence that this was done,
> in Mein Kampf and elsewhere.
Of course a substantial part of Mein Kampf would appear to have been
written by Hess when he and Hitler were in prison. Anyhow as a source
its been discredited some years ago
>
>
> > The knowledge acquired in Vienna most certainly influenced the
> > Nuremberg conventions. In 1908 Hitler (age 18) went to the opera to
> > introduce himself to Alfred Roller. He wanted to assist in set design
> > as an artist, but his courage failed him and he went away. (Eduard
> > Frauenfeld). He studied set design, costumes, lighting (later his
> > knowledge surprised many opera directors). According to Albert Speer,
> > Hitler as Reich Chancellor still made set design drawings for Wagner
> > operas, including sketches for every scene in 'Ring of the
> > Nibelungs'.
>
> > Speer's "domes of light" (at Nuremberg) were a simple continuance
> > of Roller's "direction of light" incorporating the "sea of red
> > flags" (Albert Speer / Brigitte Hamann).
>
> Again, you're extrapolating without support -- assuming, for example,
> that Hitler's interest in stagecraft was somehow an indicator of
> Wagnerian political influence. How could it have been, exactly? What
> does it prove? Are you claiming that his Wagnerian tastes somehow shaped
> the Nuremberg rallies -- how, exactly? By being big and noisy? But
> that's the comic-book view of Wagner; Wagner is if anything more often
> quiet and intimate, and in his life he had no great taste for political
> rallies.
No I'm not - it wasn't my intention, but the misunderstanding
this time may be my fault, although I do clearly say "the knowledge
he acquired in Vienna" - not the knowledge he acquired from Wagner.
What this in fact says is Hitler's many visits to the opera to see
Wagner's works in Vienna, in the main influenced his desire to create
sets - Roller's sets gave him certain ideas for the rallies.
Wagner's music provided the introduction. And I've even supplied
sources for this information!
>
> You are also assuming as definite that Hitler directed Speer personally
> in his creation. Actually Speer, no particular Wagnerian as far as I
> know, seems to have operated very much on his own, and the light effects
> more probably reflected a worldwide interest in the possibilities of
> lighting of that power, which had only become possible since WWI -- very
> recently, then. Searchlight batteries became very fashionable for public
> events generally, not just such rallies, and was part of futuristic
> visions of many kinds. A striking example is the use of searchlight
> effects in films of the time by Fritz Lang (determined anti-Nazi, at the
> cost of his marriage and career), playing over the buildings of
> "Metropolis" and the set-piece launching of the spacecraft in "Frau im
> Mond". Their use can hardly be related directly to Hitler unless that's
> all you're looking for -- and that still doesn't explain how that's
> supposed to demonstrate Wagnerian influence.
See my note above. Speer acknowledges where the idea came from, by the
way. But he is another tainted source, isn't he?
>
> > Certainly Wagner's ideas influenced Hitler - both directly and
> > second hand via other volkish groups in Vienna, which in turn had also
> > been influenced by them. A double whammy, so to speak. Wagner did not
> > make Hitler. Some of his ideas, however, did influence him - to say
> > otherwise is to fly in the face of lots of contemporaneous evidence.
>
> *What* evidence? You don't seem to be able to tell it from mere
> association. And here you suddenly bring in "other volkish groups in
> Vienna" which you claim were also Wagner-inspired. How, exactly? In any
> case, Hitler distrusted the Viennese and felt much more inspired by
> Munich.
>
> > These ideas also carried weight with a number of prominent Nazis:
> > Wagner's phase "der plastische Damon des verfalls der Menscheit"
> > (plastic demon of the decay of humanity) used in reference to the Jews
> > had a particularly fear-inspiring and menacing ring to it as
> > acknowledged by Rosenberg (Alfred Rosenberg, 'Die Protokolle der
> > Weisen von Zion und die judische Weltpolitik').
The young Hitler while in Vienna spent his time between the opera
(invariably Wagner),
and a variety of Volkish meetings and events. I gave specific instances
in my second post in this thread.
>
> Rosenberg despised Wagner! One more card falls out of the house.
Where have I stated otherwise? You know what's interesting here you
keep crying "what evidence". I've littered the posts I've made
with sources. But you have not given one solitary source for all your
own assumptions and counter claims?
>
> A number of
> > Wagner's ideas and phrases rattle about like loose marbles in this
> > work. As they do in Bruno Malitz, 'Die Leibesuebungen in der
> > nationalsozialistischen Idee', published in 1934 - the destruction of
> > the Jews is not for national socialism but for Germany: "I hold the
> > Jewish race to be the born enemy of pure humanity and everything noble
> > in man," from Wagner, again, as a source for the necessity of this
> > destruction, and a validation of it.
>
> > I accept that in coining his many anti-Semitic phases and ideas, Wagner
> > had no idea of how they might eventually be interpreted and used by
> > others. How could he? But he did generate these unpleasant (and
> > embarrassing for the modern Wagnerite) gems of hatred. Acclaimed as a
> > genius, the greatest musical dramatist, etc, Wagner's name could not
> > fail to add a certain validity to the Nazi philosophy and Weltpolitik.
>
> You haven't proved that this very ordinary phrase is in fact a direct
> quote. Such buzz-phrases often fly around in propaganda, endlessly
> repeated without their origin being realised by the hacks retailing
> them. And even assuming every more or less Wagnerian piece of abuse did
> in fact originate with him, so what? Nobody denies he was an
> anti-semite,
So what, you ask? Why I wonder did Wagner write his various prose
works? For money? To educate and inform? To influence? You appear to be
suggesting it doesn't matter if extremists took on board his
anti-Semitism, first or second hand? This I suppose wouldn't
constitute an "influence in your book?
>but it's not even circumstantial evidence of any real
> inspiration. For that you'd have to show something direct, something
> substantial -- some place where Wagner produces some concept in which
> some specific article of Nazi belief or practise originates. And you
> can't, because there isn't any.
Quite frankly it'd be hard to demonstrate any one specific influence
on NSDAP thinking. In my last post but one I did mention some of the
many influences on Hitler in Vienna - but to what degree did they
influence him? Who can honestly say? I certainly haven't suggested
anywhere that Wagner was a major influence, simply an influence, one of
many
> Taylor is the old-fashioned received view of Wagner -- ignoring, for
> example, that the poor first wife had deceived Wagner from the start,
> pretending her illegitimate daughter was her younger sister (even,
> unforgiveably, to the girl herself!) and running off with an officer
> within weeks of their marriage, returning to Wagner only when that
> officer kicked her out as used goods. Wagner, as many men would not
> have, forgave her and took her back, and we have evidence -- surviving
> letters --of his affectionate atttitude to her thereafter. Some monster!
> She, on the other hand, seems to have been paranoid, demanding and
> uncomprehending. While Wagner was no angel, his record is demonstrably
> much better than the usual line.
I included the note on Taylor because he gave a halfway-civilised
reason for why one should ignore Wagner's failings - however, it
would appear you have rubbished this also?
>
>
> > An embarrassing moment indeed, but ultimately not one that damaged von
> > Karajan's career too much. Unfortunately Wagner's posthumous links
> > to the same regime have damaged his reputation badly in the eyes of
> > many - which, all in all, is a shame.
>
> All the more so because it's rubbish. Karajan's links did exist.
> Wagner's existed only in the cracked little minds of the Nazis.
Oh, exactly my point - and the reason for inclusion of this little
snippet! You have already agreed that the right highjacked music etc
from Wagner. K's links existed; Wagner's were posthumous (like
after he was dead - how could he make the links if he were dead?) his
work lived on to be used by all - in whatever way they wished.
In an early post I stated:
"It was perhaps Richard Wagner's misfortune to become the idol of a
sixteen-year-old Austrian boy who would later try to put the confused
ideas of a number of German-Volkish sectarians in to practice - with
disastrous results for Germany and the rest of the world."
Did you read and understand what I said here? I'm not blaming Wagner
for Hitler's rise to power, or his ideas as such - I'm saying it
was his misfortune to be come Hitler's idol - which he was. The
blame, I'm suggesting is those "German-Volkish sectarians".
Perhaps confusion has arisen because of my very first post in this
thread where I quoted Andrew Clark, the Arts Editor of the Financial
Times? I posted a link to his article and then pasted some of his
comments. This to provide an alternative view of Wagner and how he and
his influence are perceived by many today.
I posted:
>In 1883 Schonerer highjacked Wagner (who'd recently died) and turned
> a memorial ceremony in to a powerful nationalistic political rally. A
> few years on, and the new Richard Wagner Association in Vienna was a
> hotbed of anti-Semitism and Germanic nationalism. Germanic-national
> celebrations were always accompanied by Wagner's music - the great
> School Association celebration in Vienna, as an example, which launched
> with the Rienzi overture and ended with the Meistersinger.
You posted:
>The word, of course, is hijacked
And this is where the problem seems to lay, a question of semantics
more than anything. You see I feel that in using Wagner's music and
his ideas, even if second or third hand, does constitute
"influence". He had a reputation as a musical genius and great
thinker. His works, musical or otherwise, lend justification to
extremists.
But I think what shocked me the most in this thread was this little
item you posted:
"It would be much truer and less tendentious to say that Wagner's
ideas
were spawned by that fertile soil in the first place, among a horde of
others, and that compared to those of the average run of German
opinion,
in particular the workers and the ruling classes, they were unusually
moderate. Only the more educated and cosmopolitan people of his day
were
abandoning their established anti-semitism, and they were in a
minority.
Wagner was coopted by the Nazis long after his death; but to assume he
was some kind of proto-Nazi is to accept their propaganda at face
value,
and to ignore the facts."
Stated as usual without sources, it is factually impaired, seems to
take no account of recent research in to both demographics and
attitudes. It also doesn't reflect any of the points I had made or
was attempting to make. Twice in this thread I had highlighted the fact
the Wagner should not be judged in isolation from his society. This,
apparently, wasn't good enough and you posted the above gem - the
thinking is muddled, you appear to be implying that Wagner was an
anti-Semite but that's okay because everyone else was a worse
anti-Semite! Logically you are saying forgive Wagner because he
couldn't help the society he was a part of! Take that to its only
conclusion, Hitler and his crew came from the same damn society - we
mustn't blame them, not their fault, it's the society!
I did try to ignore this nonsense, and then someone posted it again
with the comment "Wonderful!" I'm afraid because of my health and
medication I can sometimes post a little abruptly, on this occasion
however that wasn't the case - I responded bluntly (for which I'm
sorry) because I couldn't believe any one would be so stupid to think
this argument "Wonderful".
It's the sort of thing one would expect to see on some revisionist
forum, not here. I would think Daniel Goldhagen would rub his hands
with glee and say, "they're all anti-Semites, so the whole
society's guilty (including Wagner)! Woolly headed springs to mind.
Anyhow to summarise what I have been trying to say over the past few
posts:
1. Wagner expressed anti-Semitic views
2. These formed part of the hodge-podge of volkish ideas (even if
second hand)
3. Hitler loved Wagner's music (he was also aware of the writings)
- in fact if Wagner had only written about love and integration one
race with another, do you think Hitler would have liked his music? Or
the volkish groups come to that?
4. I define these facts as influence: of how great a degree is
impossible to define.
I hope this clarifies my position. I'm sure it's one you want to
take issue with, and good for you. Lets just say we agree to disagree.
For my own part the discussion is becoming increasingly tedious. Hence,
you'll be glad to hear, I will not be contributing to any more posts
in this thread.
One last point, you claimed I said people in the group denied Wagner
was anti-Social, in fact your friend Homer posted that, not I.
So while you go off to apply a little mercurochrome to the eye of your
moderately anti-Semitic Wagner, I'll go off with my Wagner, who I
suspect is a more rounded, more human individual, a genius, no less,
with very human shortcomings! And I'll do what I do best - Lurk.
Ralph
snip
I'll go off with my Wagner, who I
> suspect is a more rounded, more human individual, a genius, no less,
> with very human shortcomings! And I'll do what I do best - Lurk.
Oh, I hope you don't just lurk, you make some interesting contributions
here, as does Mr. Rohan. FWIW, on the comment about the anti-Semitism in
German society at the time, that elicited the "wonderful". I am by a
wide margin more in agreement with you on that matter. Anti-Semitism was
indeed widespread, but I found that to be too forgiving.
Ralph
Ralph
Mike Scott Rohan
from "kate@musicnet" <waggaw...@yahoo.com.au> contains these words:
> Common sense dictates I shouldn't respond to this, because you really
> are not grasping my point - either you're not reading the posts
> correctly, or I'm just a poor communicator?
> First off, I'm quite surprised that in the same day the resident Nazi
> informs all, "I'm quite honourable for a Jew" (Dooh! Springs
> immediately to mind, which in itself is a worry), but the public
> prosecutor seems to threaten my immediate impeachment on the grounds I
> may be a fake holocaust survivor, a neo-Nazi, a personal friend of
> David Irving or some such thing. And if this isn't the case, by
> implication, I should shutup because I'm helping your "Troll".
> So lets try to clear this up:
> 1. I didn't survive the holocaust
> 2. I'm not a Nazi, neo or otherwise
> 3. I'm not Martin Borman
> 4. I'm not the second gunman from JFK's assassination
> 5. Nor am I a reincarnation of Friedrich Nietzsche determined to update
> "On Wagner"
Delighted to hear it, but I merely mentioned the possibility that you
might be the troll -- giving you the entire benefit of the doubt --
because your argument heads in the same direction, and in a similarly
specious manner.
You're claiming that "Wagner had some influence on Hitler", and
advancing various things which you claim show it. Now this is a very
serious allegation. If Wagner did indeed influence Hitler and the Nazis
in any significant fashion, then he is part of the same chain of evil
and must be held responsible for it. In such a case, for example, the de
facto Israeli ban is entirely justified; the PC attempts of a few years
ago to ban Wagner in some US colleges likewise; and the performance and
interpretation of his works is open to serious question. And in that
case our troll is also proven correct -- not in his views, of course,
but in his assertion that Wagner belongs on his side of the fence. That
is what "influence" means; it must do so in your case, because that is
why you adduce so many examples. That being so, these examples must
prove some such direct link -- and they don't. They're all impossibly
general. Some of them, such as the Roller/Speer question, have no
relation to Wagner at all -- Roller designed Wagner, Speer must have got
his idea from Roller, therefore Wagner helped to shape the Nuremberg
presentation style? That's nonsense, it's tarnishing Wagner by the
vaguest association. For one thing, Roller produced many other operas
just as significantly as Wagner's.
And you're no more specific anywhere else -- take that opening
paragraph. You claim that Hitler "saw in these works....the pulsing
heart of his vision of a romantic mythological Germany, glorious in the
past and destined to be greater in the future." But you don't give any
evidence that this was what he saw, or where exactly he saw it. And it
was this statement, incidentally, that I was disputing when I pointed
out that Hitler had in fact little use for the altgermanisch and
mythological side of Nazi beliefs -- you appear to have forgotten that
you made it. To the next sentence -- "His was an era of half-digested
Darwinist interpretation, the idea that might makes right, and Wagner
struck every kind of chord in the receptive Hitler." Poorly expressed as
that is, the implication is unmistakeable -- that Wagner communicated or
provided endorsement for the "might makes right" message. Yet you fail
to show how, or where, or any link between Darwin, Wagner and Hitler at
all. And your whole post is full of this sort of thing. You adduce as a
fact that Hitler read Schopenhauer and Nietzche and, however
selectively, was influenced by them. But in this you're taking Nazi
sources on trust, when there is every reason to doubt them. In order to
justify this you would have to point to some aspect of Hitler's belief,
words, actions or policy that demonstrated something he'd got from them
-- not just name-dropping or buzz-phrases, which could have come from
anywhere, but some concrete consequence. But Hitler's beliefs, as far as
they can be pinned down, were a half-educated, formless jumble of
bigotry and crank pseudo-science. You might even expect to find
*something* from these philosophers surfacing in such a mix; it's almost
a surprise to find there's nothing significant, but there isn't -- any
more than there is any evidence he ever read Wagner's prose. As far as
visible or provable results are concerned, he might as well not have
read any of them, let alone been influenced by them. And therefore he
almost certainly wasn't.
Again, you blithely claim Hitler's experience of Wagner performances
gave him the idea to create the Nuremberg and other rallies, but there
is no evidence for this whatsoever and plenty to the contrary. Others
have alleged or assumed it, but they didn't have any evidence either!
Indeed, as I said, there's no evidence to show that the rallies, as they
turned out, were specifically Hitler's idea or anyone else's. Whereas
there *is* evidence to show that they evolved from practical experience
in the party's early rabble-rousing days, when Hitler found that daytime
meetings were harder to inflame and more prone to listen critically. He
and the party stage-managers such as Gregor Strasser -- an efficient and
imaginative producer of these events, as opposed to Hitler, incompetent
at organizing anything -- began experimenting with evening meetings, and
adding dramatic trappings such as torchlight and orchestrated
tension-building, much as Communist party rallies (and for that matter
US party conventions) were doing at the same time. Hitler himself in
Mein Kampf did suggest one major influence on these -- but it wasn't
Wagner, it was the Catholic Church! The infamous Nuremberg style was
simply the product of this evolution with a bigger budget. Hitler was
certainly one of many influences, but by this period in his history he
was above such everyday concerns; the rallies were laid on for him by
Speer and others, Strasser having been liquidated. The connection with
Wagner, therefore, is far less important than your bald statement
asserts, in fact tenuous to the point of invisibility. You claim I
haven't given authorities -- in general it did not seem necessary,
because I was challenging not your fact but the over-large assumptions
you draw from them. Also, I've spent far more time on this, yesterday
and today, than I really have to spare without delving in the university
library. However, if you want more reliable information and informed
views on all this, I suggest you read the chapters on Hitler's rise
under "The Weimar Republic 1918-1933" in Michael Burleigh's "The Third
Reich -- A New History" -- and indeed the rest of the book, which as
part of nearly a thousand pages discusses Wagner's influence in about
two, and that largely to dismiss it; and also the chapters "Emergence of
the Leader" and "Mastery over the Movement" in Ian Kershaw's biography
Hitler, along, naturally, with the rest of this book, accepted as the
benchmark for this generation -- which also deals very briefly and in a
balanced fashion with Wagner's purported "influence". These are good
general introductions, reasonably up to date and universally respected
-- except among the lunatic fringe, of course -- and their reading lists
will take you further if you wish.
The idea of Wagner's having had any significant, responsible influence
on Hitler and the Nazis is abandoned by such reputable historians these
days, and peddled only by sensationalists such as Kohler, tendentious
and shallow. The problem he conveniently ignores is also yours -- that
such "evidence" as there is only serves to show that Hitler liked
Wagner. That's simply be a misfortune for which Wagner can't be held
responsible, any more than the cream buns Hitler guzzled -- at least
without solid evidence. To go from that to Wagner shaping Hitler may
seem a natural progression, but actually, when you think about it, it's
a very large step, which would require extremely solid support. What we
get instead is a leap of assumption. "There must be some connection,
surely!" But no, there need not be. The more you look at both figures
independently and without preconceptions, the less they in fact have in
common. The idea of Wagner as proto-Nazi was largely a populist product
of the last war, shaped by journalistic minds with only a stereotype of
Wagner; and that stereotype itself was in fact shaped by Nazism -- "this
is dark and Germanic, it reminds me of Nazis!" -- so that they were only
completing a mental circle.
> > Now this, I'm afraid, is an example of why you're not a historian.
> But where have I claimed that I am?
Yet you cavalierly claim historical truth in historian's terms, citing
historical authority. And in doing so, you exemplify one of the classic
historical pitfalls. You assume that because Wagner was or thought X,
the Nazis also were or thought X. If you are only considering Wagner and
the Nazis, it may look like that, indeed -- as if because Hitler was so
obsessed with Wagner, there must be some kind of causal connection. But
if there is nothing to support this in specific detail, it's fallacious
to assume it. It's easy to show why. If, instead of sticking to these
two points, you look at a wider picture -- including, for example, the
growth of beliefs and movements parallel to Nazism in France -- you will
see the same things, X or whatever, coming about without the least
possible influence from Wagner at all. *That's* what having a
historian's perspective means; and that's why this question can only be
considered from such a perspective.
I'm a writer forced in to
> premature retirement due to ill health, in actual fact.
Now *that* begins to look suspiciously like a troll's joke, since it
would partly describe me also -- although the retirement's more of a
change of direction. But I am also, among other things, a trained
historian, and I dislike fake history.
A closing detail: you question whether such a thing as "moderate" racism
is possible. Of course it is. If you don't recognise a degree of
difference between somebody merely bitching in a bigoted fashion about
immigrants' cultural influence, and a skinhead beating an immigrant's
head in or inciting others to do so, then you need your sense adjusted.
Neither is pleasant or desirable, but the one is less harmful than the
other (and harder to police, in practical terms). The laws of both
Britain and the USA recognise this distinction. Under those laws Wagner
would have been at worst a borderline case.
Jeff
<waggaw...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
Rohan has propagandized himself into an empty intellectual corner.
Having refused to judge my arguments on their merits, refusing still
to admit that I have any substantive arguments whatever, refusing to
even exchange civility with Kate, he is left with no intellectual
tools to work with but invective, misrepresentation, slander, and a
sickly dependence on playing the "nazi" card.
One result of this intellectually and psychologically stunted behavior
is that he appears to be obsessed with nazis and nazism, neo-nazis,
intimations of nazism, rumors about nazis and crazy nazi conspiracies
to rehabilitate Adolf's reputation. Rohan lives in an imaginary nazi
wonderland where he fantasizes armies of nazis marching toward him
from distant horizons, singing songs of conquest, whips in hand, about
to leap through the computer montitor to drag him out and mistreat him
sexually.
Such fantasies must be traumatizing for those who suffer them, but to
others they can appear comic and infantile.
Rohan faces a conundrum. He can continue to rail with empty
irrationalism against legitimate arguments and watch the number of
group users who are increasingly unsure what to believe about Wagner
increase year after year. Or he can turn to the primary sources for
help in responding to legitimate questions. That would be the adult
thing to do. Rohan however, true to form, has chosen to do the
childish thing -- to substitute schoolyard insults for a grown-up
exchange of ideas.
While I'm almost certainly not right about everything, I'm not wrong
about everything either. No one is wrong about everything! That's what
terrifies Rohan his neo-Marxist buddies. The day they admit the
possibility that I am not wrong about everything, their psychological
world will collapse. They'll have addmitted that I am a human being,
that I eat my soup with a spoon just like they do. And there's the
rub. They can't afford to admit that racialists are ordinary men and
women -- that is, human beings. The Rohan types committed themselves
to this nazi devil fantasy half a century ago and have ridden it so
long so successfully they can't get off, no matter how broken down and
exhausted the old nag is.
Rohan is a smart guy. When a smart guy goes over the line and becomes
a true believer it's almost impossible for him to change his mind.
When a true believer changes his mind he becomes an apostate. He feels
like a traitor. A dumb guy can just change his mind and go about his
business. A smart guy who's become a true believer has to work out a
theory explaining how, being so smart, he could have believed
something so dumb for so long. It's not easy. I'm sure.
kate@musicnet
Mike Scott Rohan wrote:
> A closing detail: you question whether such a thing as "moderate" racism
> is possible. Of course it is.
> mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk
Well I didn't want to play anymore on this thread, but I feel feisty
today so I damn well will!
"Bajo de la pena nace
La rosa que no quema el aire."
Know what I mean?
I suggested: "we agree to disagree, but you want more."
Generally, sweetheart, I decline to engage in a battle of wits with an
unarmed man - but as you desire continuance and wish to persist in
your nonsense, I'll make an exception this one time.
You have health problems? I'm sorry - honestly I am, I didn't
know that. Do those problems inhibit you reading and understanding what
others write? Are they psychological?
Perhaps you feel it rude of me to ask (just idle curiosity on my part,
of course)?
You worry about me being your Toll, but the paranoia is all yours -
and if you really believed it you wouldn't bother to reply to me,
would you? No, you know you wouldn't.
Que espera la virtud o que confia?
I have to confess to being lazy - I've only read part of your
reply. It's all too long, too tedious, too contrived to a solitary
point of view, to warrant my attention.
The problem is your view of Wagner and history:
"Un dios, Amor, frenetico y oscuro,
Un vivo dios sin nombre y sin palabras,
Mueve al silencio tenebroso en cantos,
A mil lengua deshecha en alarido..."
So to speak, and curtisy of Octavio Paz. I thought Spanish might make
you pause and take note of what you were reading?
You do like to keep bringing France in to the discussion - which I
haven't mentioned! Of course Napoleon B was an anti-Semite. Not, I
think, influenced by Wagner - so maybe you say:
"Je suis comme le roi d'un pays pluvieux..."
I would simply reply:
"Et puis, et puis encore? O cerveaux enfantins!"
I might even suggest, borrowing from Verlaine:
"De la musique avant toute chose".
A much superior argument to any you have managed to advance!
Well, I've tried a little French and a little Spanish in the hope you
read and understand what it is I'm saying here. I'm not sure
it'll make any difference because I think the problem is a solitary
male's pubigerous bellicosity - I suspect any woman who has an
opinion, and worse, an opinion supported by a level of knowledge you
find hard to cope with, it'll cause a catastrophic imbalance of
testosterone in you which will result in the blind self-opinionated,
hectoring, lecturing posts that have appeared here in this thread!
You have in your posts demonstrated your own racism and anti-Semitism
which appear to grow out of your desire to protect you version of
Wagner come what may. Some of the things you suggest, and which one
member of the audience felt was beautiful (thanks to Ralph for pointing
out my error on this) - or beautifully, you should both hang your
heads in shame - your attitude and statements are indefensible!
Frankly, as soon as you realised the absurdity of what you had posted
you should have stopped!
What was it Gerard de Nerval said:
"C'etait bien lui, ce fou, cet insense sublimw."
So let's take a look at you "minor" anti-Semitism shall we?
Hitler, well 2% according to David Irving - he uses the same
arguments to defend his hero as you use to defend Wagner e.g. don't
trust the contemporary sources for a variety of reasons - except
where they agree with your opinion! And he didn't know what was
happening to the Jews.
Adolf Eichman, well, maybe only 1%, he was ordered to do what he did
- he had worked with the Jews, spoke Hebrew, he didn't in himself
think them that bad!
And, as Irving, whose methodology you're so keen on using, states:
Eichman only confessed to anything because he thought it would get him
off"!
And you state, as does David Irving, you are an Historian!
De nihilo nihil, in nihilum nil posse reverti.
Personally, I think Himmler's got to be a 40% hasn't he?
Yesterday I showed our posts to five people, all women, two Jewish, one
Muslim, one Catholic, and one not sure. None know much about Wagner,
but having read your replies, all felt you were a racist and
anti-Semite - perhaps (so the suggestion went) a "closet" racist
- in other words you think yourself open and equality minded - but
in the passion of the moment the truth spills inadvertently on to the
page?
Is this really how you want to come across? Do you really think you are
doing the cause of Wagner any favours with such arguments?
My God, I've seen any number of idiots flounder in the midst of
pseudelogia phantastica before. You are crucifying your own cause with
the absurdity of your arguments. When in a deep hole, stop digging -
and in your case: LISTEN!!!
I've quoted six contemporary sources for Hitler's exposure to
Wagner's ideas and music. I could post six more. No point. Because
like David Irving and the other revisionists, you state the
contemporary sources are tainted. Fine, I say, so far I have numbered
sixteen individual references to Hitler and Wagner, referencing
Wagner's ideas and music in Gobbles' diaries. A tainted source? Why
would Gobbles lie to his diary?
Anyhow, as an "historian (?), you would understand as well as I do,
if the sources are all tainted - discussion ceases. Why? Because all
that's left is opinion on either side!
Your OPINION is Wagner couldn't, wouldn't, influence anyone.
My OPINION is Wagner's music, his ideas, his poetry and drama, were
so great they influenced all sorts of people - including YOU!
Because you find all contemporary evidence from the third Reich
unacceptable (I assume you include remarks made by the Wagner family?)
no one can ever argue from anything but a simple point of view -
unsupported by fact! That includes both for and against!!!
I didn't want to post any of this - you forced the issue. I think
(and I'm not alone in this) that you have displayed an unwelcoming
and "fascist" attitude towards me (perhaps because I'm female?),
that you have presented in this place views that are both racialist and
anti-Semitic - which I for one find disgusting! - And that you pay
no attention to what I actually post - you continue to reply to some
imaginary issue? For example you still talk about: "substantial
influence" and "major influence".
Much more interesting than all of your nonsense, perhaps, is this: In
April 1903 Debussy was in London and filled reviews of "Parsifal"
and "Ring" (shown at Covent Garden) for Gils Blas - temporarily
he was acting as music critic for La Revue Blanche, as well as Gil
Blas. Amfortas was a melancholy knight of the Grail "who whines like
a shop girl whimpers like a baby". He considered Kundry a
"sentimental draggletail". But he considered "Parsifal" "one
of the most beautiful monuments ever raised to music."
"It is difficult," he wrote about the Ring, "to imagine the
effect made on even the toughest mind by the four evenings of the Ring.
Wagner, if one may express oneself with some of the grandiloquence
which belongs to him, was a beautiful sunset which was mistaken for a
dawn."
Ummm, not too sure I'd agree with that last bit.
I look forward to wholeheartedly trashing your next racist post!
Mike Scott Rohan
from "kate@musicnet" <waggaw...@yahoo.com.au> contains these words:
> Mike Scott Rohan wrote:
> Know what I mean?
> I would simply reply:
Your style suggests your supposed retirement as a writer wasn't in the
least premature. And anyone who's read me here over the last few years
knows I'm not a racist, and take some pleasure in putting such idiots
down -- have, indeed, a track record in doing so. I don't have to depend
on my own judgement, and certainly I'm not open to yours. Nor am I a
"solitary" male, and the women who share my life don't seem to feel
particularly downtrodden; academically, they've probably got the edge on
me! So you can inform these people you claim to have showed the article
to that they shouldn't jump to such silly conclusions -- if indeed they
did, or simply agreed with you in case you bit them.
You, on the other hand, sound plain peculiar. Where or when did I say
Wagner couldn't influence anyone? Nowhere. Nor did I ever say Hitler and
Eichmann were "minor" anti-Semites; they were both clearly very serious
ones by my definition, involved in promoting and inciting active
violence to Jews even if they didn't actually murder anyone in person.
And you seem totally incapable of understanding the difference between
saying "Hitler liked Wagner" and "Hitler was influenced by Wagner",
although it is crucial, and I could hardly have spelled out both the
distinction and the reasons why more clearly. You don't even attempt to
understand the entirely valid historical point I made about France,
namely that anti-semitic and fascist movements of the Nazi type
developed there independently without anything that could be Wagner's
influence. Your whole post, including your great displays of irrelevant
quotations, is a jumble so complete that it suggests the psychological
problems you're so ready to attribute to me.
Your problem seems to be that you do not in fact read what other people
are saying, but instead contruct your own version of it inside your
head. You attack me for saying I'm a historian on the sole grounds that
David Irving also says he's one; unfortunately he is, and was once quite
a reputable one before the inner fascist surfaced. But there are lots of
historians who aren't fascists, the majority in fact, so your attempt to
link me with him is frankly idiotic. Once again, you're constructing
your own reality and shouting at it.
In this disintegration from apparent sense to blithering nonsense and
wild abusive accusations -- libellous ones, incidentally, you should be
more careful -- you really do resemble the troll very closely. Others
have noted the resemblance, and chided me for bothering with you --
rightly, I think. If you're not him, you're on the same mental plane.
You should get together and shout each other to sleep. But whoever you
are, you're just a waste of time; and you will henceforth be gibbering
to yourself. Killfile.
Jeff
<waggaw...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>You have in your posts demonstrated your own racism and anti-Semitism
>So let's take a look at you "minor" anti-Semitism shall we?
>Yesterday I showed our posts to five people, all women, two Jewish, one
>Muslim, one Catholic, and one not sure. None know much about Wagner,
>but having read your replies, all felt you were a racist and anti-Semite...
>(and I'm not alone in this) that you have displayed an unwelcoming
>and "fascist" attitude towards me ...
>I look forward to wholeheartedly trashing your next racist post!
Wooooaahhh.
Rohan is an "anti-Semite," a "fascist," and a "racist misogynist"?
I am highly offended by the association. Please stop this. or I will
be forced to drop out. Or is this a 'conspiracy' to trick me into
leaving? (If so, pretty clever.)
Damn conspiracies - they're everywhere.
Ralph
I have only a brief comment. I am not going to get into who
misunderstood whom first in this thread. I've been in this group for a
few years, and I only know Mr. Rohan through this group. From that, I
can safely say that the taint of any bigotry is as foreign to him, as
anyone I have come across. I am truly sorry that the two of you got off
to this rough start. I think you are a fascinating writer, and I believe
you can make some very useful contributions here.
I hope a new page can be turned.
Ralph
Richard Loeb
"Ralph" <NoS...@semqkz.net> wrote in message
news:yhvDg.3624$Qf....@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
Oh brother. Richard
kate@musicnet
Ralph wrote:
> Hi Kate,
>
> I have only a brief comment. I am not going to get into who
> misunderstood whom first in this thread. I've been in this group for a
> few years, and I only know Mr. Rohan through this group. From that, I
> can safely say that the taint of any bigotry is as foreign to him, as
> anyone I have come across.
> Ralph
In which case, I wholeheartedly and unreservedly apologise to him for
suggesting this.
My judgement (as stated) was based on a number of statements he made in
this thread, including an inapt and unsound comment regarding moderate
racism and anti-Semitism - I witnessed the results myself as a
youngster in France, and later in Luxemburg, particularly Luxemburg
city, the outcome of "moderate" racism.
It really wasn't very nice, nor ultimately very "moderate".
If I have misread or misunderstood what he intended in his posts,
again, I can only apologise.
On our two view points, I can only again stress, we should agree to
disagee.
Kindest regards.
Ralph
Kate, indeed. I sympathize with you on the levels of anti-Semitism, that
are found out in the world, and even in this newsgroup. On that issue, I
know who has been my friend here. I am glad that things are smoothed out
now.
Kind regards as well,
Ralph
Mike Scott Rohan
from Ralph <NoS...@semqkz.net> contains these words:
{snip)
> Kate, indeed. I sympathize with you on the levels of anti-Semitism, that
> are found out in the world, and even in this newsgroup. On that issue, I
> know who has been my friend here. I am glad that things are smoothed out
> now.
> Kind regards as well,
In response to Ralph, for whose endorsement I'm suitably grateful --
nobody said "moderate" racism was at all good, and I would very much
rather Wagner had not been prone to it. But I make allowances for him
for three reasons: he was a child of his time, and that was not 1883 but
the much less enlightened early 19th century; he never called for,
encouraged, condoned or even, it seems, envisaged any violence towards
Jews; and his personal behaviour towards Jews was, despite its annoying
side, very different from his words, and enough to inspire admiration
and even devotion. That has to separate him both from generic
anti-semites of his time, and the vicious brutes who came after. Next to
that moderate racism is *relatively* harmless and very often a step on
the way to better sense, which to judge by his last and more temperate
remarks Wagner seems to have been achieving.
Since I've been attacked personally, though, I might as well repeat
something I've said here more than once -- that I grew up in a tradition
of post-war tolerance in Scotland, with the recent horrible example not
remote history but very much before us. I went to school with many
Jewish boys, especially Polish, who were the children of refugees and
often had lost close relatives in the Holocaust. Nobody that I knew of
thought anything special or different about these kids in themselves,
except that they were the lucky sods (along with Catholics and the odd
Hindu) who didn't have to turn up in time for prayers. The Scots
themselves, as I mentioned in another thread recently, were no strangers
to "moderate" racism throughout the late 18th and 19th century --
moderate to the point of minor riots, that is. It was preferable to what
came before, and possible to deal with in our own fashion. So I have no
brief for bigotry of any kind, indeed.
But the law recognises degrees of any offence, even murder, for a very
good reason, namely that it's hard enough as it is to achieve just
results by lumping individuals together under one law. If you then lump
their actions together, without distinction, it becomes impossible. Do
you punish Hitler and Wagner and Eichmann the same way? Then you've got
to include (forgive, those who've seen these examples so often lately)
Yeats and Maud Gonne, Ezra Pound, T.S.Eliot, G.K.Chesterton, Katherine
Mansfield and many of the Bloomsbury group (her comments on sharing a
table with Anglo-Indian academics are horrific), and G.K.Chesterton,
whose works, unlike Wagner's, drip vicious anti-semitism, and that at a
time when the Nazis were visibly on the rise. It's actually a lot harder
to make allowances for them than it is for Wagner -- they were born late
enough to know better. But the world does indeed distinguish between
them and Hitler, and it's right. So why am I being vilified in the most
extreme terms for suggesting the same apply to Wagner?
As to the post you quote: although, knowing France, I could quite well
believe in someone suffering "moderate" anti-semitism there, even today,
I'd have expected that would make the parallel growth of racism there
blazingly relevant; instead, my mention of it was trashed, again with
personal viciousness. And that last post as a whole was a mixture of
semi-literate gibberish, irrelevant and random quotation, and
screamingly hysterical accusations on very serious, even criminal,
matters. Either it was spewed up without rational or even sane thought,
or it was produced for deliberate effect; which, hardly matters. Why,
after something that offensive, should one take any purported apology
seriously for a moment? Or give a damn about anything else that might be
said?
Richard Partridge
following:
I agree. I was surprised by that comment.
There have been times when I thought "Kate" was simply another persona of
Jeff, our protean troll, though now I don't think so. Various clues lead me
to infer that she probably is indeed female and not American -- two points
of difference, I think, from Jeff.
Dick Partridge
Ralph
>>> I hope a new page can be turned.
>>>
>>> Ralph
>> "I think you are a fascinating writer, and I believe
>> you can make some very useful contributions here."
>>
>> Oh brother. Richard
>>
>>
> I agree. I was surprised by that comment.
>
> There have been times when I thought "Kate" was simply another persona of
> Jeff, our protean troll, though now I don't think so. Various clues lead me
> to infer that she probably is indeed female and not American -- two points
> of difference, I think, from Jeff.
>
>
> Dick Partridge
Talking about Kate resembling Jeff, comes the Pot calling the kettle
black. By the way, Kate offered an apology to Mr. Rohan, you never did on
that Jewish conspiracy thread you started a couple of months ago (it was
very Jeff like of you, going on there, and elsewhere). You said some
nasty things towards Mr. Rohan, when he failed to go for your
recruitment drive. He in turn handled you with patience and grace (which
you didn't deserve). But then apologies might make your bigoted house of
cards come crumbling down, and you need your life sustaining myths.
BocaJack
<mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk> wrote:
> Next to
>that moderate racism is *relatively* harmless and very often a step on
>the way to better sense, which to judge by his last and more temperate
>remarks Wagner seems to have been achieving.
Let's take a quick peek at what Rohan calls "[Wagner's] last and more
temperate remarks" concerning racism.
Review the following Wagner statements, made near the very end of his
life, and then you will understand why Kate is scratching her head and
asking herself: "What part doesn't he understand?!"
Paragraph 1 comes from Wagner's "Hero-dom and Christendom" (1881)
Paragraph 2 comes from Wagner's "On the Womanly in the Human Race"
(1883). He died a few weeks later.
Amazingly, Wagner's own words have no effect on Rohan, who tells
another outrageous lie: that Wagner's racialism faded with age.
___________
1.
In his essay "Hero-dom and Christendom", Wagner's racism is fully and
emphatically articulated:
"Whilst yellow races have viewed themselves as sprung from
monkeys, the white traced back their origin to gods, and deemed
themselves marked out for rulership. It has been made quite clear that
we should have no History of Man at all, had there been no movements,
creations and achievements of the white men; and we may fitly take
world-history as the consequence of these white men mixing with the
black and yellow, and bringing them in so far into history as that
mixture altered them and made them less unlike the white. Incomparably
fewer in individual numbers than the lower races, the ruin of the
white races may be referred to their having been obliged to mix with
them; whereby, as remarked already, they suffered more from the loss
of their purity than the others could gain by the ennobling of their
blood...[I]f the noblest race's rulership and exploitation of the
lower races, quite justified in a natural sense, has founded a sheer
immoral system throughout the world, any equalising of them all by
flat commixture decidedly would not conduct to an aesthetic state of
things. To us Equality is only thinkable as based upon a universal
moral concord, such as we can but deem true Christianity elect to
bring about."
2.
Wagner's deep concern for the racial crisis of modern white
civilization affected him until the very end of his life. "On the
Womanly in the Human Race" (1883), a recently composed essay found in
Wagner's papers after his death, dramatically warns that "it is
certain that the noblest white race is monogamic at its first
appearance in saga and history, but marches toward its downfall
through polygamy with the races which it conquers."
Mike Scott Rohan
from Richard Partridge <r.par...@verizon.net> contains these words:
{snip}
> There have been times when I thought "Kate" was simply another persona of
> Jeff, our protean troll, though now I don't think so. Various clues lead me
> to infer that she probably is indeed female and not American -- two points
> of difference, I think, from Jeff.
You may well be right. I was never sure, ready to give the benefit of
the doubt, but from my point of view it makes little difference now.
I've seldom read a barmier post here, and that's saying something.
Enough! Let's get back to Wagner in general and not this eternal working
over of the racist question.
Cheers,
Mike