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AFP interview with Gottfried Wagner: 'I saw him as a threat'
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Oscar
May 22, 2013, 4:26:50 AM5/22/13
to
Fascinating interview. Gottfried Wagner, the rebellious great-
grandson, said in his 1977 autobiography that 27 rolls of private home
movies of Hitler and the Wagner family are still under lock and key.
Have they ever been released?
From Norman Lebrecht's Slipped Disc blog:
<< Extracts from Gottfried Wagner’s Agence France-Presse (AFP)
interview with Simon Morgan have been widely quoted in newspapers and,
in some instances, traduced. We reprint the complete interview below,
in which Gottfried takes issue not just with his ancestor and siblings
but with conductor Christian Thielemann, who has declared Wagner’s
music to be apolitical.
As the musical world lavishly celebrates Richard Wagner’s bicentenary,
the composer’s great-grandson insists he is no spoilsport by
denouncing the German master as a narcissist, woman-hater and an anti-
Semite.
“I’m not out to make people feel guilty. It’s not my wish to have
Richard Wagner banned. I’m just not one of the adulators, the incense-
burners,” Gottfried Wagner told AFP in an interview.
There is no mistaking who Gottfried is descended from.
The resemblance is striking: the same prominent nose and high forehead
that have marked out most of Wagner’s descendants.
But the 66-year-old musicologist, writer and lecturer sets himself
apart from the other members of the sprawling Wagner clan by refusing,
as he sees it, to sweep under the carpet the darker side of one of
history’s most controversial composers.
The son of the late Wolfgang Wagner — the patriarch who ruled over the
legendary annual music festival dedicated to 10 of the composer’s
operas for nearly 60 years — Gottfried learnt the price of rebellion
early.
“I was carted off to boarding school for spraying red paint” on the
famous bust of Richard Wagner by Arno Breker, Adolf Hitler’s favourite
sculptor, Gottfried explains.
The bust still stands in the park in front of the legendary
Festspielhaus theatre built to Wagner’s own designs in Bayreuth,
southern Germany, which remains a place of fervent pilgrimage for
Wagner lovers and aficionados.
“I was classified as difficult. But I stand by what I did even today,”
even if the act of vandalism was more a gut reaction than a planned
intellectual protest, Gottfried explains.
“I saw him as a threat,” he says.
Gottfried has indeed been seen as the black sheep of the Wagner family
ever since, cemented by the 1977 publication of his autobiography 'He
Who Doesn’t Howl with the Wolf'.
In it he called for the voluminous private correspondence between
Hitler and the Wagner family dating from 1923 until 1945 to be made
public, as well as 27 rolls of private film footage, all still kept
under lock and key.
But Gottfried’s half-sister Katharina Wagner — who co-runs the
Bayreuth Festival with Eva Wagner-Pasquier — has dampened hopes that
the Hitler letters would be published any time soon, telling
Tagesspiegel newspaper that all of the different Wagner heirs must
agree to it.
In Gottfried’s latest book, 'You Shall Have No Other Gods Before Me',
released this year to coincide with the bicentenary, he examines the
deep-rooted anti-Semitism and misogyny that runs through the
composer’s works.
“It’s not about spoiling (Wagner) for people. But there is nothing to
be gained from whitewashing him and idealising him. Massive
personalities such as Richard Wagner are not untouchable,” the
composer’s great-grandson says.
— ‘I refuse to be in a soap opera’ —
In addition to his 13 completed operas, Richard Wagner was a prolific
writer and theorist.
One of his nastiest publications was an anti-Semitic pamphlet “Judaism
in Music”, which he first published under a pseudonym in 1850, but
then revised and released under his own name in 1869.
Wagner’s oeuvre “includes a whole range of racist and sexist
writings”, Gottfried Wagner says.
“He developed his own racial theories, too. Obscene racism. And with
our knowledge today, we can’t just ignore it and say ‘it’s all just
beautiful music’”.
The different branches of the Wagner dynasty have waged a long
internecine feud for control of the Bayreuth Festival.
But Gottfried, who wrote his doctoral thesis on Kurt Weill and other
composers branded “degenerate” by the Nazis, says he never wanted any
part in that battle.
“I made that clear very early. There was never any question for me
that I would take over from my father. I want to retain my
independence. I see my stance as an ethical one. I refuse to be an
actor in a soap opera,” he says.
Gottfried says he has no truck with those he describes as Wagner’s
“apologists” who refuse to acknowledge the role the composer played in
paving the way for Nazism in Germany.
German conductor Christian Thielemann, the Bayreuth Festival’s
unofficial musical director, contends in his own recent book entitled
“My Life with Wagner” that music is per se non-political and that a “C-
major chord is just a C-major chord”.
But Gottfried is dismissive of such statements.
“Wagner uses tonalities in a very concrete context. Not by chance. It
always has a message,” he says.
He sees a direct link between Wagner’s music and the lust for
political power.
Hitler himself was a regular visitor to the festival and a personal
friend of the Wagner family.
Modern politicians still vie for attention on the red carpet at
Bayreuth’s glitzy opening night.
“It’s all about self-adulation. That’s what brings people to Bayreuth
and what Richard Wagner delivers par excellence. Bayreuth will always
be political,” says Gottfried.
“And if Chancellor Angela Merkel is there, you can’t just say it’s all
just about beautiful music.” >>
grandson, said in his 1977 autobiography that 27 rolls of private home
movies of Hitler and the Wagner family are still under lock and key.
Have they ever been released?
From Norman Lebrecht's Slipped Disc blog:
<< Extracts from Gottfried Wagner’s Agence France-Presse (AFP)
interview with Simon Morgan have been widely quoted in newspapers and,
in some instances, traduced. We reprint the complete interview below,
in which Gottfried takes issue not just with his ancestor and siblings
but with conductor Christian Thielemann, who has declared Wagner’s
music to be apolitical.
As the musical world lavishly celebrates Richard Wagner’s bicentenary,
the composer’s great-grandson insists he is no spoilsport by
denouncing the German master as a narcissist, woman-hater and an anti-
Semite.
“I’m not out to make people feel guilty. It’s not my wish to have
Richard Wagner banned. I’m just not one of the adulators, the incense-
burners,” Gottfried Wagner told AFP in an interview.
There is no mistaking who Gottfried is descended from.
The resemblance is striking: the same prominent nose and high forehead
that have marked out most of Wagner’s descendants.
But the 66-year-old musicologist, writer and lecturer sets himself
apart from the other members of the sprawling Wagner clan by refusing,
as he sees it, to sweep under the carpet the darker side of one of
history’s most controversial composers.
The son of the late Wolfgang Wagner — the patriarch who ruled over the
legendary annual music festival dedicated to 10 of the composer’s
operas for nearly 60 years — Gottfried learnt the price of rebellion
early.
“I was carted off to boarding school for spraying red paint” on the
famous bust of Richard Wagner by Arno Breker, Adolf Hitler’s favourite
sculptor, Gottfried explains.
The bust still stands in the park in front of the legendary
Festspielhaus theatre built to Wagner’s own designs in Bayreuth,
southern Germany, which remains a place of fervent pilgrimage for
Wagner lovers and aficionados.
“I was classified as difficult. But I stand by what I did even today,”
even if the act of vandalism was more a gut reaction than a planned
intellectual protest, Gottfried explains.
“I saw him as a threat,” he says.
Gottfried has indeed been seen as the black sheep of the Wagner family
ever since, cemented by the 1977 publication of his autobiography 'He
Who Doesn’t Howl with the Wolf'.
In it he called for the voluminous private correspondence between
Hitler and the Wagner family dating from 1923 until 1945 to be made
public, as well as 27 rolls of private film footage, all still kept
under lock and key.
But Gottfried’s half-sister Katharina Wagner — who co-runs the
Bayreuth Festival with Eva Wagner-Pasquier — has dampened hopes that
the Hitler letters would be published any time soon, telling
Tagesspiegel newspaper that all of the different Wagner heirs must
agree to it.
In Gottfried’s latest book, 'You Shall Have No Other Gods Before Me',
released this year to coincide with the bicentenary, he examines the
deep-rooted anti-Semitism and misogyny that runs through the
composer’s works.
“It’s not about spoiling (Wagner) for people. But there is nothing to
be gained from whitewashing him and idealising him. Massive
personalities such as Richard Wagner are not untouchable,” the
composer’s great-grandson says.
— ‘I refuse to be in a soap opera’ —
In addition to his 13 completed operas, Richard Wagner was a prolific
writer and theorist.
One of his nastiest publications was an anti-Semitic pamphlet “Judaism
in Music”, which he first published under a pseudonym in 1850, but
then revised and released under his own name in 1869.
Wagner’s oeuvre “includes a whole range of racist and sexist
writings”, Gottfried Wagner says.
“He developed his own racial theories, too. Obscene racism. And with
our knowledge today, we can’t just ignore it and say ‘it’s all just
beautiful music’”.
The different branches of the Wagner dynasty have waged a long
internecine feud for control of the Bayreuth Festival.
But Gottfried, who wrote his doctoral thesis on Kurt Weill and other
composers branded “degenerate” by the Nazis, says he never wanted any
part in that battle.
“I made that clear very early. There was never any question for me
that I would take over from my father. I want to retain my
independence. I see my stance as an ethical one. I refuse to be an
actor in a soap opera,” he says.
Gottfried says he has no truck with those he describes as Wagner’s
“apologists” who refuse to acknowledge the role the composer played in
paving the way for Nazism in Germany.
German conductor Christian Thielemann, the Bayreuth Festival’s
unofficial musical director, contends in his own recent book entitled
“My Life with Wagner” that music is per se non-political and that a “C-
major chord is just a C-major chord”.
But Gottfried is dismissive of such statements.
“Wagner uses tonalities in a very concrete context. Not by chance. It
always has a message,” he says.
He sees a direct link between Wagner’s music and the lust for
political power.
Hitler himself was a regular visitor to the festival and a personal
friend of the Wagner family.
Modern politicians still vie for attention on the red carpet at
Bayreuth’s glitzy opening night.
“It’s all about self-adulation. That’s what brings people to Bayreuth
and what Richard Wagner delivers par excellence. Bayreuth will always
be political,” says Gottfried.
“And if Chancellor Angela Merkel is there, you can’t just say it’s all
just about beautiful music.” >>
Ricky Jimenez
May 22, 2013, 11:57:54 AM5/22/13
to
On Wed, 22 May 2013 01:26:50 -0700 (PDT), Oscar
<oscaredwar...@gmail.com> wrote:
>German conductor Christian Thielemann, the Bayreuth Festival’s
>unofficial musical director, contends in his own recent book entitled
>“My Life with Wagner” that music is per se non-political and that a “C-
>major chord is just a C-major chord”.
>
>But Gottfried is dismissive of such statements.
>
>“Wagner uses tonalities in a very concrete context. Not by chance. It
>always has a message,” he says.
That is a new one on me. Is he saying that there are smaller units
<oscaredwar...@gmail.com> wrote:
>German conductor Christian Thielemann, the Bayreuth Festival’s
>unofficial musical director, contends in his own recent book entitled
>“My Life with Wagner” that music is per se non-political and that a “C-
>major chord is just a C-major chord”.
>
>But Gottfried is dismissive of such statements.
>
>“Wagner uses tonalities in a very concrete context. Not by chance. It
>always has a message,” he says.
than the leitmotiv that a definite (political?) meaning in Wagner? Any
examples given? I know that some composer (was it Rimsky-Korsakov who
had absolute pitch) put out a tract where he identified different keys
with emotions. Do Wagner's writings have something similar?
Jay Kauffman
May 22, 2013, 4:02:38 PM5/22/13
to
Bob Harper
May 22, 2013, 7:45:59 PM5/22/13
to
On 5/22/13 1:02 PM, Jay Kauffman wrote:
(sknip)
the fact that 'real Wagnerians' don't agree is hardly surprising, but
also not very convincing or important. Richard Wagner was a genius and
also apparently a terrible human being. Too bad, but kthere it is.
Bob Harper
(sknip)
> I wouldn't take Gottfried too seriously - few real Wagnerians do.
> Wagner Fan
This is a rather too easy dismissal of Mr. Wagner's reported views. And
> Wagner Fan
the fact that 'real Wagnerians' don't agree is hardly surprising, but
also not very convincing or important. Richard Wagner was a genius and
also apparently a terrible human being. Too bad, but kthere it is.
Bob Harper
Jay Kauffman
May 22, 2013, 11:19:55 PM5/22/13
to
Bob Harper
May 23, 2013, 1:04:40 AM5/23/13
to
that comment is not particularly clear. The rest of what he says seems
to me to be about Wagner's attitudes and the attitudes of those who
worship--yes, worship--him. I am not the one with preconceived attitudes
here.
Bob Harper
Herman
May 23, 2013, 3:35:38 AM5/23/13
to
On Wednesday, May 22, 2013 10:02:38 PM UTC+2, Jay Kauffman wrote:
>
> I wouldn't take Gottfried too seriously - few real Wagnerians do. Wagner Fan
and who decides who the "real Wagnerians" are?
>
> I wouldn't take Gottfried too seriously - few real Wagnerians do. Wagner Fan
M forever
May 25, 2013, 12:23:43 PM5/25/13
to
how good the music is that he wrote. But, you know, it is all too
human for people, usually people with a weak character, too feel the
need to believe in and worship some kind of leader/prophet/savior
figure. You should know all about that.
M forever
May 25, 2013, 12:26:40 PM5/25/13
to
“Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at
her.” (John 8:7) ---
Are you without sin, Bob?
Bob Harper
May 25, 2013, 2:41:32 PM5/25/13
to
On 5/25/13 9:26 AM, M forever wrote:
> On May 22, 7:45 pm, Bob Harper<bob.har...@comcast.net> wrote:
>> On 5/22/13 1:02 PM, Jay Kauffman wrote:
>> (sknip)
>>
>>> I wouldn't take Gottfried too seriously - few real Wagnerians do.
>>> Wagner Fan
>>
>> This is a rather too easy dismissal of Mr. Wagner's reported views. And
>> the fact that 'real Wagnerians' don't agree is hardly surprising, but
>> also not very convincing or important. Richard Wagner was a genius and
>> also apparently a terrible human being. Too bad, but kthere it is.
>
> --- And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them,
> �Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at
> On May 22, 7:45 pm, Bob Harper<bob.har...@comcast.net> wrote:
>> On 5/22/13 1:02 PM, Jay Kauffman wrote:
>> (sknip)
>>
>>> I wouldn't take Gottfried too seriously - few real Wagnerians do.
>>> Wagner Fan
>>
>> This is a rather too easy dismissal of Mr. Wagner's reported views. And
>> the fact that 'real Wagnerians' don't agree is hardly surprising, but
>> also not very convincing or important. Richard Wagner was a genius and
>> also apparently a terrible human being. Too bad, but kthere it is.
>
> --- And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them,
> her.� (John 8:7) ---
>
> Are you without sin, Bob?
>
>
Like all of us--even you!--absolutely not. But I know it, try to atone
> Are you without sin, Bob?
>
>
for it, and trust in God, through the merits of His Son, to wash them away.
"But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumblingblock,
and unto the Gentiles foolishness:" (1 Corinthians 1:23)
That is no doubt how you see it. As must be obvious, I don't. And with
that, knowing any further response would be quite useless, I'll say no more.
Bob Harper
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