The role of Wangerism in German Culture in the Third Reich

Richard Wagner had many followers during his lifetime and after his death, but it wasn’t the vast majority of these who used his legacy and his work and in the process have done damage

Houston Stewart Chamberlain, an Englishman married to Wagner’s second daughter Eva, called himself a “born-again German”. When Cosima Wagner retired he took over the running of Wahnfried (the Wagner’s residence) and in the process ‘transformed Bayreuth’s passive nationalism and racism into an aggressive, crusading force. Under his influence the Bayreuth Blätter and the Official Bayreuth Festival Guide became oracles of military nationalistic, ardently anti-democratic and viciously anti-Semitic views. Together with Eva, he supervised the publication of Wagner’s writings and built up a Wagner archive which was manipulated to suit his ideological purposes’#. Chamberlain also ‘lived to greet Hitler as the saviour of Germany during the latter’s visit to Bayreuth in October 1923’#. Like Wagner before him, Chamberlain was inspired by Schopenhauer, Lagarde and Gobineau but he also borrowed work from Kant and Goethe who he understood to be Völkisch thinkers and Darwin. Chamberlain not only studied Darwin’s work but his attempts ‘to apply Darwin’s principles to human affairs represented a particularly crude example of social Darwinism’# as did the Nazi’s later on. Chamberlain called his book, Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, “a product of Bayreuth” as an acknowledgement of the other disciples and Bayreuth eventually came to known as ‘a center of völkisch ideology, at precisely the moment when it was fading as a center of artistic creativity’#. When the First World War broke out Chamberlain became very outspoken about the British. He would write quite abusive propaganda on England, condemning all aspects on English life. This outburst at Britain at a time of war rather than casting him as a hysteric, solidified his position as on the German Right (even tough he kept his British citizenship until 1916). When Germany was defeated Chamberlain, like many other new conservatives at the time, wanted an even more radical solution, so in the 1920’s when Hitler and Nazism came along Chamberlain was ready for him. In 1923 Chamberlain wrote this letter to him:

The Reichsmusikkammer (Reich Music Chamber) was the controlling force over musical life during the Third Reich. The RMK also issued exact metronome speeds that the National Anthem, Die Meistersinger, was to be played at. The Bayreuth Festival was exempt from the control of the RMK because of the close friendship between Winifred and Hitler. This did not, however, prevent Bayreuth from becoming a cultural showcase of the Third Reich. When the Nazi’s came to power the RMK took control of the opera houses and concert halls, they drove out all of the Jews and declared culture to be ‘a weapon of the state’#. Joseph Goebbels, who was head of the Chamber of Culture, was a great propaganda user. He apotheosised Wagner in a number of cliches including ‘the greatest music genius of all time’, ‘the fullest embodiment of the national ideal’, and ‘the herald of National Socialism’. Goebbels was also responsible for turning Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger into the Nazi anthem. Unlike Hitler, though, Goebbels was not such a fan of Wagner, he saw the composer merely as a propaganda tool for the Nazi party. Other members of the party even found Wagner’s musical works an ‘unpleasantness to be endured’#. Hitler knew of the unpopularity of Wagner within the party and he overcame this by attending the Bayreuth Festival personally every year

Some topics in this essay:
Vienna Wagnerites, Schopenhauer Wagner, Nazism Chamberlain, Wagner Hitler, Bayreuth Blätter, William Shirer, Germans Jews, World War, Festival Guide, Bayreuth Festival, bayreuth blätter, bayreuth festival, winifred wagner, third reich, wagner’s disciples, heinrich von stein, die meistersinger, gobineau’s essay, bayreuth nazi, close friendship, stewart chamberlain, winifred wagner hitler, hans von wolzogen, houston stewart chamberlain, ‘the herald national,