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Número 276 - Zaragoza - Diciembre 2023|
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FORO
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Suscríbete ya a la newsletter de Música Clásica |
| Documentos sobre Parsifal (Liceu 2005) |
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http://amicsliceu.com/temp0405/cast/Cat04.html http://amicsliceu.com/temp0405/cat/Cat04.html Reparto La redención de Parsifal, Rosa Sala Síntesis argumental El Contexto, Jordi Llovet Parisfal: arte y religión, Dieter Borchmeyer Ficha vocal, Marcel Cervelló |
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Wagnerianos: En la página de Amics del Liceu, cuya web tenéis arriba, la Sra. Rosa Sala, autora del ?Diccionario crítico de mitos y símbolos del nazismo? nos ?regala? con ?perlas? como estas: -la lectura cristiana y RACIAL-ANTISEMITA de Parsifal. -los referentes simbólicos del nacionalismo étnico alemán .... el símbolo de la SANGRE ARIA. -La celebre frase final, "redención al redentor", no alude a la salvación de Anfortas sino a la REDENCIÓN DEL JUDAÍSMO que Parsifal está ofreciendo al Redentor cristiano por excelencia. (Es decir, Cristo. Lo que contradice la afirmación anterior de esta señora en el sentido de que Wagner estaba ?obsesionado? con el origen ario de Jesús). A ver si se aclara usted y no nos embrolla. -El terrible "pecado" de Anfortas no consiste en la ruptura de sus votos de castidad, sino en el hecho que haya cedido a la seducción de la JUDIA (!!!) per excelencia, Kundry, y por eso, contaminado su sangre y se haya hecho indigno para la custodia del Grial. -La misteriosa judia oriental Kundry, esta maravillosa imitación femenina del judío errante. -La música es, al fin y al cabo, la que aún hoy NOS REDIME DE WAGNER. Dudo mucho que esta gran especialista en temas nazis haya leído a un auténtico entendido de la obra del genial Richard, como era Ángel Mayo. Este ilustre wagneriano conocía perfectamente tanto el libreto de Parsifal como los diarios de Cósima. No recuerdo yo que su explicación del Parsifal se pareciera ni remotamente a las ramplonerías anteriores. Seguro que esta señora, tan entendida ella, nos explicaría que los nibelungos Alberich y Mime son realmente para Wagner dos ejemplos de judíos codiciosos, materialistas y malignos, y que Siegfried representa la ingenuidad y la nobleza de la pura raza aria. No digamos cuál sería su docta explicación de Maestros, la ?revelación? del ?auténtico? mensaje de Wagner: con el zafio judío de Beckmesser, pura envidia y mediocridad, y la pureza y grandeza del resto, sin duda efecto milagroso de la sangre aria que corre por sus venas. El final de la obra, como no podía ser de otra manera es un canto premonitorio al Tercer Reich. Wagner, precursor del nazismo. ¡Menuda sabiduría! ¡Qué bien que sabe leer entre líneas esta señora e interpretar los mensajes secretos de un protonazi camuflado! Por cierto, ¿QUIÉN NOS REDIMIRÁ DE ESTA CLASE DE ?EXPLICACIONES?? ¿HASTA CUÁNDO TENDREMOS QUE AGUANTAR DESBARRES COMO ÉSTOS? Voto a Wotan que ya estoy hasta la punta de la lanza de tantas barbaridades y sandeces. Un saludo y que se enteren WAGNER NO TIENE NADA QUE VER CON LAS FALSEDADES QUE SE HAN DESTILADO CONTRA ÉL. Rex. |
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"¿QUIÉN NOS REDIMIRÁ DE ESTA CLASE DE ?EXPLICACIONES??" ¿Parsifal?¿Kundry?¿Schiefelnsief (o como se escriba)?¿Shin-Chan?. "¿HASTA CUÁNDO TENDREMOS QUE AGUANTAR DESBARRES COMO ÉSTOS?" Probablemente por mucho tiempo aún... Hombre, Rex, no te sulfures tanto que no vale la pena. Por otra parte yo tengo mi particular clasificación de los que hacen interpretaciones tendencioso-imaginativas de Wagner: En el puesto 3, bronce, algunos directores de escena. En el puesto 2, plata, los nazis y filo-nazis. En el puesto 1, oro, y venciendo a los anteriores en su propio terreno (sólo hay que ver el artículo de esta señora: ni Goebbels en sus sueños más salvajes): los antiwagnerianos que lo son por simple corrección política. Saludos y tranquilidad. |
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Hola, Sigfrido: No te procupes, que no me va a subir la tensión por esto, ya estoy acostumbrado a tales desmanes; aunque me cuesta creer que un asociación tan prestigiosa como la dels "Amics del Liceu" no sean más selectivos a la hora de incluir colaboraciones en sus escritos. Muy interesante tu particular clasificación. ¡Que Wotan maldiga a los que calumnian a Wagner y su obra! Un saludo. Rex. |
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No vas muy desencaminado, te copio la crónica de Luis Ripoll sobre su ponencia, no hace mucho, en otro acto de la agencia de viajes "Amics del Liceu", y de su "grupo Wagner" recién creado. Saludos. De: "Luis Ripoll" Fecha: dom may 9, 2004 9:25 pm Asunto: Simposi Wagner - Una breve crónica persona[l], 2ª parte http://es.groups.yahoo.com/group/rwagner/message/5968 Hola a todos, La primera ponencia de la segunda parte con el tema "La utilización de Wagner por el nazismo" estuvo a cargo de Rosa Sala, licenciada en filología alemana y doctora en filología románica por la Universidad de Barcelona. De hecho yo calificaría su intervención de anti-wagneriana y tendenciosa, ya que una justa exposición del tema debería contemplar todos los ángulos, y parece que solo nos quería hablar del más negativo y tendente a demostrar que Wagner era un precursor del nazismo. Su exposición la basó en los siguientes puntos: Su primera frase fue "Hay mucho de Hitler en Wagner", luego se basó en el supuesto uso que hizo Wagner de la filosofía de Hegel, de los textos de Gobineau, de los comentarios de Wagner contenidos en el diario de Cosima y anotados escrupulosamente por ella y que "por algún motivo no se publicaron hasta 1976", por supuesto fue base de su exposición el panfleto publicado por Wagner sobre el Judaísmo en la música, siguiendo con que a través de su obra nos expresa su crítica al judío, como según ella Beckmesser (y su serenata desafinada para demostrar que los judíos no tienen capacidad artística), y a la pureza de la raza encarnada por el matrimonio incestuoso que da fruto a Siegfried el hombre de raza pura, luego con Kundry que muere al ser redimida extinguiendo así a las personas de raza judía. Según ella los leitmotiven musicales de Wagner tienen una intencionalidad subliminal para atacar al inconsciente y que sus ideas no son inocentes. Luego dijo que Wagner necesitaba excitar su temperamento para poder componer y que intencionadamente provocaba situaciones de discusión. Yo fui el primero en intervenir y decirle que su frase era desacertada, infortunada y con todos los respetos impropia de una justa exposición histórica en lo que una cosa nada tiene que ver con la otra, invitándola a ella y a todos los asistentes a consultar la HW y la carta que Wagner escribió 18 años después, (aduje otros argumentos y datos que no transcribo porque sería demasiado largo). Contestó que esa frase no era suya sino de Thomas Mann en 1950, y para ella de poco sirvió mi intervención ni otras, sin embargo no convenció a nadie. La última ponencia "Los antecedentes filosóficos y estéticos de la obra de Richard Wagner", a cargo de Rafael Argullol, catedrático de estética de la Universidad Pompeu Fabra. Su exposición fue breve, correctísima en las bases estéticas y filosóficas de Wagner en relación con Schopenhauer, Nietzsche. Aparte de aspectos que ya nos son conocidos por los que integramos este foro hizo una acertada disertación entre los conceptos de la razón y el mito, la base de la tragedia griega y las interpretaciones históricas. Su charla fue muy conceptual y de mucha altura, por ello me resulta muy difícil, casi imposible resumir lo que sería la elaboración de un razonamiento muy bien desarrollado. En el posterior debate del que he anticipado mi protesta, el Sr. Argullol estuvo de nuevo muy a la altura y que con maestría, sentido del humor y corrección supo contrarrestar las afirmaciones de Rosa Sala, entre otras cosas, como que no pueden elevarse a categoría de afirmar conceptos lo que pueden ser comentarios de matrimonio, dijo también "En la música de Wagner no hay ni una sola nota antijudía", y finalmente dijo algo muy significativo y didáctico respecto a la perspectiva histórica con la que juzgamos las cosas al respecto de las consecuencias negativas que por ejemplo ha tenido el marxismo desde las purgas de Stalin hasta lo de Camboya, si ahora imagináramos encontrarnos al Marx en la Biblioteca del British Museum escribiendo El Capital, ¿le diríamos "cuidado, ya sabe Vd. lo que pasará con esto que está escribiendo"?. Con esto termino este breve resumen de un Simposio que fue interesante a pesar de esa lamentable ponencia. Un cordial saludo Luis |
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Ya de paso te envío unos mensajes de un newsgroup, todos son del mismo autor y de la misma conversación. From: Laon (praxis@presto.net.au) Subject: Wagner performances in Germany, 1932 - 1940 Newsgroups: humanities.music.composers.wagner Date: 2004-05-29 10:12:10 PST A while ago Derrick or Mike mentioned that in the five year period before the Nazi takeover in Germany, Wagner had been overwhelmingly the most frequently performed opera composer in Germany, but with the Nazis in power he lost that status. The evidence was a table showing that before the Nazis took power there were four (I think) Wagner operas in the top ten most performed operas; afterwards there wasn’t a single Wagner opera in the top ten most performed operas. Performances of Wagner operas became less frequent, their place being taken by operas by Lortzing, Auber, Bizet, Verdi and Puccini. (If anyone’s got that table I’d be grateful if they could post or send me a copy, with the page reference. I think the source is Michael Kater’s _The Twisted Muse_. Which is taken out at Sydney University’s Fisher Library, so I can’t look it up.) Anyway, while I was looking up some things about romanticism/modernism, I happened upon a related set of data on Wagner performance in Nazi Germany, which may not have been posted here before. It’s a year by year breakdown of the total number of performances of operas by Wagner, Verdi, Puccini, Mozart and Lortzing throughout Germany, in each opera season from 1932/33 to 1939/40. The 1932/33 season was planned and largely performed before Hitler achieved power. It was followed by the 1933/34 season, which started after Hitler’s accession to power, and would show the beginning of Nazi control over the opera houses and their repertoire. I’ll have to summarise the data because I don’t know how to present a table in this format. Lortzing: In 1932/33, before the Nazis had taken control, there were 691 Lortzing opera performances in Germany. In 1939/40 there were 1,140 Lortzing opera performances in Germany, an increase of 65%. Wagner: In 1932/33, there were 1,837 Wagner opera performances in Germany. In 1939/40, there were 1,154 Wagner opera performances in Germany, a decrease of 37%. Puccini: In 1932/33 there were 762 Puccini opera performances in German. In 1939/40 there were 971 Puccini opera performances, an increase of 27%. Verdi: In 1932/33 there were 1,265 Verdi operatic performances in Germany. In 1939/40, there were 1,440 Verdi opera performances, an increase of 14%. Mozart: In 1932/33 there were 719 Mozart opera performances in Germany. In 1939/40 there were 643 Mozart opera performances, a decrease of 11%. It can be seen that the two most dramatic shifts in the fortunes of specific operatic composers, once Nazis took control of opera performances in Germany, were: (1) The astonishing rise of Lortzing; and (2) The dramatic fall of Wagner. It should not be necessary to point out that Nazi Germany was not a free country; politics determined which operas got played and which did not. Nazi control over what was performed in the opera houses of Germany was exercised by the "Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda" (RMVP), under Goebbels, which controlled all of the German theatres except for Bayreuth and the Berlin State Opera, which was technically under the control of Goering. The Nazi functionary in charge of setting and controlling the operatic repertoire was Reichsdramaturg Rainer Schlösser, a creature of Goebbels. Schlösser had the power to decide whether works could be performed or not, and all German theatres, even the Berlin State, had to submit their repertoires to him for approval. So the dramatic fall in Wagner performances during the Nazi era, both in absolute numbers and relative to the operas of other composers, is not just a matter of box office; it happened under a system of tight political control over which operas (and whose operas) were favoured for performance and which were not. We can get a feel for Schlösser’s preferences by noting what happened at the Deutsche Oper. There Schlösser didn’t just approve/reject the repertoire after it had been drawn up at local level; he was directly involved in drawing up each year’s repertoire. And what he wanted obviously went, since he was Reichsdramaturg. The Deutsche Oper went from 50 Wagner performances in 1934/35 to 35 in 39/40, a 30% decrease. The State Opera, under Goering but still requiring Schlösser’s repertoire approval, did even better, going from 64 Wagner performances in 1934/35 to 38 in 1939/40, a 39% decrease. (Why is my starting point for those two theatres 1934/35, when the starting point was 1932/33 for the table of opera composers? There’s no fudging going on; it’s just that I don’t have the 1932/33 figures for those two theatres.) Source: Bair, Henry, "National Socialism and Opera: The Berlin Opera Houses, 1933-1939, Part 2". Opera, February 1984, Volume 35 No 2, pp 129-130. So what’s the reason for the fall in Wagner performance under the Nazis? These figures represent the peacetime period under the Nazis, except for the last season, 1939/1940. So it’s not a matter of people needing to listen to cheery choons during wartime. I think there are two reasons. One is Nazi ambivalance over the actual content and messages of Wagner operas (as opposed to particular orchestral or choral selections taken out of context.) But I suspect the more important reason is simply a general cultural dumbing down. Wagner operas, like Mozart’s (Mozart was the other great composer whose operas became less frequently performed under the Nazis) encourage people to think, to become dissatisifed with their lives and their ideas, and that is not something that is greatly admired, or tolerated, in a Nazi cultural worldview. Much better to give the people simple affecting tunes, with tearful sentimentality alternating with romantic comedy, and not too much in the way of ideas. That was the bill, and for all that Wagner was officially a Great German Composer, he didn’t fit the bill. Nor did Mozart. (And in fairness to Verdi, Bair suggests that the Nazis were a bit suspicious of his _Simon Boccanegra_, though they seem to have liked Verdi’s other works well enough.) Cheers! Laon Date: 2004-06-17 07:57:27 PST A correspondent has sent me a further set of Wagner performance numbers, for which I’m extremely grateful. And with great kindness and patience also sent a scan of the performance table from Levi’s _Music in the Third Reich_. As a result I have three sets of figures. Each set provides a slightly different kind of measure, though they all tell a similar story. I’ll present the numbers first, with some interim comments. Detailed discussion can come later. There is some disagreement over the meaning of these numbers. Not over whether performances of Wagner operas declined during the Nazi period, both in frequency and as a proportion of all operas produced: that’s indisputable. The disagreement is more over what the key turning points are and when they occur. Anyway, here are the numbers; see what you think. 1. The 15 Most Frequently performed operas in Germany, 1932/33 and 1938/39 The 1932/33 season: the last repertoire to be decided before the Nazis came to power Rank Composer Opera No of performances 1 Bizet Carmen 373 2 Weber Der Freishütz 306 3 Wagner Der Fliegende Holländer 304 4 Wagner Tannhäuser 274 5 Wagner Die Meistersinger 262 6 Wagner Lohengrin 252 7 Verdi Rigoletto 249 8 d’Albert Tiefland 238 9 Puccini Madama Butterfly 234 10 Puccini La Bohème 228 11 Flotow Martha 220 12 Beethoven Fidelio 206 13 Verdi Il Trovatore 203 14 Offenbach Contes d’Hoffmann 197 15 Lortzing Undine 197 2 The 1938/39 season, after six years of Nazi cultural policies Rank Composer Opera No of performances 1 Leoncavallo I Pagliacci 354 2 Mascagni Cavalleria Rusticana 352 3 Puccini Madama Butterfly 317 4 Schultze Schwarze Peter 298 5 Lortzing Zar und Zimmermann 288 6 Smetana Bartered Bride 270 7 Lortzing Waffenschmiede 269 8 Verdi Il Trovatore 267 9 Bizet Carmen 266 10 Weber Der Freishütz 249 11 Puccini La Bohème 238 12 Wagner Lohengrin 236 13 Verdi La Traviata 236 14 Rossini Barbiere de Sevilla 232 15 Strauss Der Rosenkavalier 230 Interim comment: Wagner held four places in the Top 10, in the last re-Nazi season, which dropped to 0, after six years under the Nazis; though he still had one opera in the Top 15. Lortzing had no operas in the Top 10 in the last pre-Nazi season, but two in the Top 10 after six years of Nazi rule. Mascagni, Leoncavallo and Puccini were other big beneficiaries, along with Norbert Schultze, best remembered these days as the composer of "Lili Marlene". Source: Levi, Erik, _Music in the Third Reich_, Table 7.3. 2 Wagner performances, by number of performances, and as a percentage of all opera performances, in Germany, Austria and Switzerland: 1906/07 to 1942/43 Year No. of Wagner Wagner performances Estimated total performances as % of all operas no., all opera performed performances 1906/07 1,668 17.5% 9,530 1916/17 1,456 18.2% 8,000 1926/27 1,772 13.9% 12,780 1936/37 1,515 13.3% 11,390 1942/43 1,047 7.5% 13,960 Interim comment We don’t get the crucial year, 1932/3, which is a shame. Note that the number of Wagner performances declined during the First World War, from 1,668 to 1,456, but that Wagner operas actually increased their market share slightly: from 17.5% of all operas performed to 18.2%. After the First World War, with peace restored, the number of Wagner opera performances increased again, to 1,772; a number not only greater than the number of Wagner performances during the Great War, but even more than in the period before the Great War. However, note also that the rest of the opera market increased even more than the increase in the number of Wagner performances: thus Wagner lost market share, even as he increased the number of performances. There’s room for argument over what this means. I’ll sum up both sides (ie everybody else’s side, it seems, plus my side) in my next post on this thread. Source: Koehler, Fr H, _Die Struktur der Spielpläne deutsprachiger Opernbuehnen von 1896 bis 1966_, Koblenz 3 The Number of Wagner performances in Germany, 1932/33 to 1939/40 In the first post in this thread I produced a table showing the ranking of the 10 opera composers whose works were most frequently performed, comparing 1932/33 with 1939/40. Here’s a different table produced from the same data set, showing the number of Wagner performances each year, for the last season before the Nazis took over, then the first seven years of Nazi rule. Year No of Wagner performances in Germany 1932/33 1,837 1933/34 1,632 1934/35 1,641 1935/36 1,607 1936/37 1,409 1937/38 1,402 1938/39 1,327 1939/40 1,154 Interim comment: Note that these numbers are for Germany only, while the previous set of numbers was for Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Thus the Köhler figures have 1,512 Wagner performances for 1936.37, while these figures show 1,402. Both numbers seem to be correct; the difference is the inclusion of Switzerland and Austria. There’s a drop of 200 performances immediately after the Nazis took over. Then a plateau for three years, 1933/34 - 1935/36. Then another drop of 200 performances in 1936/37, that level maintained in 1937/1938. Then significant drops in 1938/39 and again in 1939/40. The pattern is of a broadly consistent decline in numbers of Wagner performances throughout the peacetime Nazi years, slow at first, but accelerating. Source: Bair, Henry, "National Socialism and Opera: The Berlin Opera Houses, 1933-1939, Part 2". Opera, February 1984, Volume 35 No 2, pp 129-130. Discussion of significances and connections between these tables next time. Cheers! Laon |
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Este, por ahora, es el último. Date: 2004-09-28 03:26:12 PST Goebbels I’ve been reading Joseph Goebbels for the last week or so. The _Diaries_ up to 1941, the "novel" _Michael_, plus various collections of speeches, articles, pamphlets and so on. A complete list of the Goebbels sources drawn on is at the end of this post. It’s not the complete works - in particular I’ve still got to work my way through the later _Diaries_, 1942 to 1945 - but it’s around two thousand or so Goebbelsian pages. I feel I’m in a position to start drawing some conclusions. Goebbels is a key figure in three threads I’m pursuing at the moment: Wagner performances 1932-1940, Siegfried Wagner, and the romanticism thread. So I’ll be adding Goebbels-related comments based on this reading all over the place, as well as starting a new thread on Friedelind Wagner. Friedelind also seems to be connected to the dramatic decline in the number of Wagner performances under the Nazis. In this thread the relevant questions are (1) Goebbels’ attitude towards Wagner, and (2) how his attitude could have affected the frequency of Wagner opera performances during the Third Reich. I’m not going to address the second of those two questions until I’ve finished looking at Goebbels’ reaction to the conduct of two other Wagners: Siegfried and Friedelind. Goebbels’ attitude to Wagner There are two entrenched positions you might start with, in relation to Goebbels’ view of Wagner. One might be that Goebbels took Wagner seriously not only as a composer but as a great German, as an antisemite and as a political thinker, even to such an extent that it is reasonable to say the Wagner influenced Goebbels’ political views. The other might be that Goebbels preferred other composers, was dismissive of Wagner as a person, disliked Wagner’s call for Jewish and German assimilation, and cared nothing about Wagner’s political views. How to cheat at citations It occurred to me, particularly when reading through the _Diaries_, how easy it is to select quotations that seem to support one or other of those views, neither of which is quite correct. For example, the first faction might pull out these _Diary_ quotes: 25 July 1924: "Richard Wagner in Paris. What an abundance he had of Faust-like idealism, of artistic misery, of the hard struggle for bare existence, of mental agony and physical need. A German genius bound into wage slavery for a filthy Jew (Schlesinger), condemned to earn his bread through the lowliest work, a genuine artist required to do make-work for commercial Jews, and arrange pieces for the brutes of the public." 13 August 1932: "The Tristan is the height of all German art. Heavenly beautiful." 23 July 1936: "I read Wagner with great pleasure. A true master." The other faction would pull out _Diary_ quotes like these. 28 July 1924: "Has Wagner for us already become dated? Just like Schiller? His works, perhaps." 30 July 1924: [Goebbels is reading _My Life_] "Richard Wagner. He is not giving as much pleasure. He has enough money and little injustice to fight against. That’s when one becomes soft and fastidious. I love fighters and sufferers." 31 July 1924: "In addition, Wagner has yet another unpleasant quality: extravagance, and a tendency to splendour and luxury. That is not really fitting for an artist, especially not the latter." 12 August 1928: [After a performance of _Parsifal_] "One does not need to be a pacifist like that, in order to get something done!" [These words directly follow Goebbel’s note on a conversation with the conductor Karl Muck during the _Parsifal_ interval, but the words "a pacifist like that" refer to the opera’s hero, and not to Karl Muck.] 21 July 1936: "’Parsival’ [sic]. Too pious for me. And too solemn. Not for an old heathen." All of these are real and significant citations, but both factions are cheating, of course. For example that entry in which Goebbels’ expressed his admiration for Wagner’s Faust-like character, in the struggling Paris days, was followed by Goebbels’ disillusionment as he read further in _Mein Leben_. (The reference to Wagner’s employer Schlesinger as a "filthy Jew" was Goebbels’ own work, by the way; there are no antisemitic remarks about Schlesinger in _My Life_.) Likewise, Goebbels did indeed muse that perhaps Wagner’s works had become dated, but that momentary doubt was more than outweighed by many later _Diary_ entries showing his continued enthusiastic response to Wagner performances. Also, immediately after conceding that the works might be dated, Goebbels consoled himself with the thought that Wagner’s endurance in times of hardship would always remain inspiring. But in homage to the methods of Joachim Köhler, Michael H Kater and others, for demonstration purposes I just "happened" to leave that information out. The difference is that I’ve owned up, two paragraphs later. Attempt at balance Anyway, I’ve attempted to take both kinds of evidence into account and assemble a picture that reflects the balance of evidence as accurately as possible. I have my own view, obviously, but I’m not going to leave out relevant evidence that tells against my view. People may disagree with my arguments and conclusions, of course. Perhaps the first thing to note is that Goebbels’ reaction to Wagner involved a distinction that most people make when dealing with the Wagner phenomenon. That is, Goebbels separated his attitude to the creative work, principally the music and drama, from his attitude to the man. So I’ll deal with these two aspects of Goebbels’ response to Wagner separately before attempting a summing-up. Goebbels and Wagner’s works There is no doubt that Goebbels greatly admired Wagner’s music, and his music drama. Ive already cited Goebbels writing that _Tristan_ was "divinely beautiful". There are many other similar statements. For example after criticising Wieland Wagner’s sets for the 1937 _Parsifal_, he added, "But this music! A magical sound, with nothing like it. Wagner is an unequalled master of orchestration" (24 July 1937). And so on. The _Diaries_ from 1923 to 1941 show Goebbels attending the Bayreuth festival most years until 1938. There are few references suggesting that he listened to Wagner outside of festival conditions, but when he was at the Festival his comments show that at least to 1940 he continued to love the operas, except perhaps _Parsifal_, and that he saw himself as a connoisseur of their performance. This does not mean that Wagner was Goebbels’ favourite composer. I’ll cite a slightly wider range of Goebbels’ comments on music when I discuss Goebbels’ attitude to Romanticism in that thread. But in the meantime I can say that of all the Nazis he probably came closest to Hitler in his appreciation of Wagner, but that he seems to have preferred Beethoven and Mozart. Before looking more closely at Goebbels’ reading of the Wagner operas, it’s worth noting that he did make use of an antisemitic phrase from one of Wagner’s prose works. In his "The Racial Question and World Propaganda" speech at Nürnberg, 1933, Goebbels said, "Richard Wagner once called the Jews the ’shaping spirit of decline’ and Theodor Mommsen meant the same when he saw them as the ’ferment of decomposition’." Goebbels also alluded to that "shaping spirit" phrase in his "total war" speech of 18 February 1943, this time without mentioning Wagner. [WA Ellis translated Wagner’s German phrase "plastische Dämon" as "plastic demon", and the phrase has become well known in English in that version. But word-substitution is not always good translation, and both "plastic" and "demon" are misleading and confusing in English. By "plastische" Wagner meant "shaping" in an active sense, the sense preserved in the phrase "plastic arts" and Shelley’s phrase "the one spirit’s plastic stress"; he did not mean "easily shaped" or "protean". By "Dämon" he meant "spirit", the usual Greek sense of this Greek word; he did not mean a pointy-tailed reddish imp carrying a fork, or anything on those lines. You could stay closer to Wagner’s vocabulary by using the English equivalent of the Greek word, translating the phrase as "shaping Daimon". But that makes almost meaningless English. The translation "shaping spirit" loses a nuance but best expresses the primary sense.] It’s relevant to point out that in the context of the essay in which it occurs, Wagner’s phrase meant that German culture was supposedly being led, through Jewish ownership of newspapers, journals, theatres and so on, into increasing trivialisation, responding to novelties instead of to real merit. That was the "decline" discussed in the paragraphs in which the phrase occurs, and that was how the Jewish "shaping spirit" was supposedly bringing about that decline. Still, though the original meaning is obviously relevant, it’s not the whole story. It’s also true that the phrase is a strong and striking one, and it contributed to the rhetoric of antisemitism in a way that was independent of its actual meaning. The fact that the phrase has adhered to Wagner instead of to his targets, diminishing his reputation, is entirely his own fault. It is a fact that Wagner left something of use to the Nazis’ antisemitic activity, and that fact is a disgrace. However there are two things that should be kept in mind. First, Wagner was not singled out for this kind of appropriation. Goebbels used his Wagner phrase along with similar statements from other Great Germans like Schopenhauer, Kant, Mommsen, and others. A good example of this form of Nazi name-dropping is provided by this extract from a document intended for German schools. "The populations of European states always had a healthy sense of the foreign nature of the Jews, and it would be easy to fill a book with statements by the leading men of every century to prove this. Bernhard of Clairvaux, the pious preacher of the Second Crusade, Geiler of Kaysersberg, the farmed Straussberg cathedral preacher (died 1510), and not least Martin Luther, expressed their strong opposition to the claims of the Jews, about their disdain for physical labor, and about their hatred of all non-Jews. Frederick the Great ordered Jews to be removed from all country towns, and Maria Teresa declared them the worst plague a state could have because of their treachery and usury. The sorrow greedy Jews caused for Germans during that period is shown in the 1940 film ’Jud Süss’. When Goethe was discussing religion in his discussion of his principles of education (W. Meisters Wanderjahre, book 3, chapt. 11), he wrote: ’For this reason, we do not tolerate Jews among us, for why should we give them a share in the highest culture, which their origin and background rejects?’ Fichte, and later Moltke, use almost the same words to declare the Jews ’a state within a state’." [_Du und dein Volk_, Reichsleitung der NSDAP, Hauptamt für Erzieher (NSLB), Munich: Deutscher Volksverlag, 1940] Wagner’s usefulness was equal to that of Bernhard of Clairvaux, Geiler of Kayserberg, Martin Luther, Frederick the Great, Maria Teresa, Goethe, Fichte and Molkte, also Schopenhauer, Kant, Mommsen and many others. Second, it appears that Goebbels took the phrase from a secondary source. The readiness with which these citations could be produced, and the tendency for Goebbels’ citations to be the same as those used by other senior Nazis such as Rosenberg, reveals something about Goebbels’ source for these quotations, including the Wagner one. Goebbels’ _Diaries_ indicate that he had read Wagner’s _On Conducting_, all or most of _My Life_ (he became disenchanted with Wagner’s later life, and it’s not clear that he finished the book), and one other unspecified piece. The "plastische Dämon" phrase comes from Wagner’s essay "Know Thyself", and Goebbels never made any reference to this essay, or showed any familiarity with its argument. This is not entirely surprising, as "Know Thyself" insisted that there is no such thing as a German race, and recommended that Germans look instead at the pure humanity that dwells both in Germans and in "the Jews", and then they wouldn’t alarm themselves by seeing people as "Jews". Goebbels is unlikely to have liked this essay much, if he had read it. So where might Goebbels have got the "plastische Dämon" phrase from, if, as seems most likely, he hadn’t read "Know Thyself"? Perhaps surprisingly, there is an obvious and probable candidate. Hitler, Streicher, Rosenberg and Goebbels all made use of a book called _Handbuch der Judenfrage_, first published by Theodor Fritsch in 1896, but reissued many times in the early 20th century, often in updated versions that included more recent citations. The _Handbuch_ contained all the other "cultural" antisemitic quotations that Goebbels used, and not just the Wagner one: it is highly probable that it was his source for the "shaping spirit of decline" phrase. This book, or its descendants, survives to this day: documents like "Quotes about Jews" and "1001 Quotes by and about Jews", that float around the web’s neo-Nazi sites and, sadly, also Arab and Palestinian sites, are essentially updated versions of this text. While Wagner’s phrase was offensive, and it is disgraceful that he left Nazis anything at all that they could use in their antisemitic propaganda, the textual evidence does not support the idea that Goebbels, or other senior Nazis, read or showed any interest in Wagner’s so-called "regeneration" writings. Instead they picked phrases from Goethe, Kant, Schiller, Luther, Schopenhauer and the rest, not from primary sources but from collations like Fritsch’s _Handbuch_. Having formed their ideology from other sources, they looked to such collations to find quotations to lend a spurious respectability and a faked erudition to their own writings and speeches. The point is neither to dismiss nor to overemphasise this. Wagner’s phrase was taken out of its context from an essay whose actual argument could not have appealed to the Nazis, who almost certainly took it at second hand, and he was one of many writers whose works were "harvested" for phrases to use in this way. Still, he wrote the phrase, and it’s a disgrace to him that Goebbels was able to use it. Turning to Goebbels’ comments on the music, and the music dramas, we find aesthetic appreciation but little theoretical interest. Goebbels did not see the operas as allegories of racial struggle, or of military virtues, or of pagan bloodthirstiness, or any of the other fantasies that have been erected, after the fact, about the Nazi reception of Wagner’s music. His comments show that he reacted to Wagner’s operas first as music, secondarily as stories, and not at all as philosophical or allegorical works. He liked _Tristan und Isolde_ as a tender love story, for example, but never showed any interest in the ideas behind it. I have found just two comments by Goebbels that come even close to being interpretive, in relation to the operas. First, in the same passage (12 August 1928) in which Goebbels remarked that "one did not need to be a pacifist like that", he also said that _Parsifal_ is "four hours of divine service", and noted that Parsifal is "a genius of morality". This suggests a quite conventional reading of _Parsifal_. There is nothing in Goebbels, anywhere, that supports or is even consistent with the elaborate Adorno-Gutman-Zelinsky-etc construction in which _Parsifal_ was an opera about German knights in a Spanish garden, and their struggle to maintain their racial purity in the face of challenges by Jewish magicians and seducers. Instead Goebbels interpreted the work as being about divinity and morality, and in 1928 was already deprecating its pacifist message. By 1936 he seemed to have found _Parsifal_’s divinity and morality, not to mention the pacifism, unpalatable, in much the same way as Rosenberg had (21 July 1936, cited above). A second near-example is Goebbels’ radio introduction to the live broadcast of _Meistersinger_, from the opening of the 1933 Bayreuth Festival, which also contains a perfunctory shred of interpretation. Once again, Goebbels’ comments are of no help to people believing either that Beckmesser was a Jewish caricature, or that the Nazis thought that Beckmesser was a Jewish caricature. (But I don’t need to dwell on that point, because that particular myth has been disposed of. David Dennis recently carried out a comprehensive survey of Nazi writings, covering books, Diaries, speeches, pamphlets and newspaper articles, from supposedly high-brow "cultural" commentary to the lowest antisemitic propaganda, and established that no Nazi-era production of _Meistersinger_ ever presented Beckmesser as Jewish, and nor did any Nazi commentator ever make a comment that indicated that they thought Beckmesser was a Jewish character. When the data is finite - even though very extensive - with enough perseverance it is possible to prove a negative.) Anyway, Goebbels’ speech "Richard Wagner and the Art Sentiment of our Time" mostly concerned the revolution the Nazis had brought about. Richard Wagner got a few paragraphs out of six pages. However Goebbels did take the opportunity to claim: "Germany is the classic land of music. Melody seems to be born into every person here. From the joyous music of the whole race came a great range of artistic genius, that of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Wanger, which remain the highest peaks of this people’s artistic genius" [page 193]. He added that Wagner was unique, in being a great dramatist as well as a great composer. (An oddity is Goebbels’ reference to Hans Sachs’ "Schwanenmonolog" [page 195], which is presumably a mistaken for the "Wahnmonolog". Did Goebbels not know the opera as well as he claimed? More likely he didn’t carefully proofread transcripts of his speeches before they were published.) Goebbels’ conclusion was that the Führer’s and the Nazi’s devotion to the great German musical tradition was linked to the great political revival that the Nazis were supposedly leading. The nearest thing to an interpretive remark about _Meistersinger_ is the claim that the "Wacht auf" chorus is "a striking parallel to the awakening of the German people from the deep political and spiritual Narcosis of November 1918". Even this is at best a borderline case, as Goebbels only suggested a "parallel", and did not claim that this reading is really part of the work’s meaning or reflected Wagner’s intention. But those are the two examples that I found. In general it seems safe to say that Goebbels enjoyed the works but did not bother overmuch with their "messages". It occurs to me that while discussing Goebbels it’s worth addressing the idea that the massed-marcher effects, the use of torchlight, and other aspects of the Nürnberg and other Nazi rallies were based on Wagnerian stagecraft. The claim strikes me as puzzling, because I can’t see any meaningful resemblances between Nazi rallies and any scene in a Wagner opera. The Mastersingers march into the middle of a Festival, and they ... hold a song-contest. The guests at the song-contest in _Tannhäuser_ march, but only into their seats to hear some songs. Or was the choreography of the Nürnberg rallies based on the Wedding March? Torches are brought on near the end of _Götterdämmerung_, but that’s a returning hunting party waking people out of bed in the middle of the night: more a confused rabble than a rally. Goebbels wrote a lot about propaganda, and his Ministry gave instructions on how things like rallies should be run, but the alleged Wagner connection doesn’t seem to have occurred to them. Goebbel’s _Diary_ entries on the rallies, and his comments elsewhere do not mention any such idea. Anyway, nothing in Wagner strikes me as very rally-like, and I’ll leave that topic there. If anyone does think there is a resemblance, I’d be glad to read their reasons. Anyway, that should bring me back to looking at Goebbels’ take on Wagner as a man, and Goebbels’ view on whether Wagner was a worthy role model. But that will be next time. Cheers! Laon PS: Goebbels sources consulted so far: * _Michael: ein deutsches Schicksal in Tagebuchblättern_, Microfilm. New York, N.Y. : YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Leiden : IDC, 2002. No. 5 on a reel of 6 titles. (Nazi propaganda literature ; NCY-1769.5) Filmed from the original held by: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research; * _Signale der neuen Zeit: 25 ausgewalten Reden von Dr. Joseph Goebbels_, Zentralverlag der NSDAP, Frz Eher Nachf., München, 1938; * Vom Kaiserhopf zur Reichskanzlei, translated as "My Part in Germany’s Fight", translated Kurt Fiedler, Hurst and Brackett, London, 1935; * _Die Wahrheit über Spanieren, Rede auf dem Reichsparteitag in Nürnberg, 1937_, München : Zentralverlag der NSDAP, Franz Eher Nachf., 1937. * _National socialist Germany as a factor of European peace_, Berlin : Mueller & Sohn, 1934. * Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels : sämtliche Fragmente / herausgegeben von Elke Fröhlich, im Auftrag des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte und in Verbindung mit dem Bundesarchiv, V1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4, München ; New York : K.G. Saur, 1987-<1998> * Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels / im Auftrag des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte und mit Unterstützung des Staatlichen Archivdienstes Russlands herausgegeben von Elke Fröhlich_, V1:1/1, V1:1/3, V1:2/2, V1:3/2, V1:4, V1:5, V1:6, V1:7, V1:8 and V1:9, _ München ; New York : K.G. Saur, 1998-_ * Plus the 98 speeches, articles, pamphlets etc written by Goebbels or issued under his name from 1928 to 1945, available on the invaluable German Propaganda Archive maintained by Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Missouri. I’m about to receive: Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels / im Auftrag des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte und mit Unterstützung des Staatlichen Archivdienstes Russlands herausgegeben von Elke Fröhlich, Volume 2, which covers 1942 - 1945. All translations from the _Diaries_, and from the 1933 Bayreuth Festival speech, are mine. Page numbers from the Meistersinger speech are from _Signale der Zeit_. |
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Muy agradecido por tu información, Fco Javier. Además me vendrá muy bien para practicar inglés. Tenéis suerte los que podés asistir a conferencias wagnerianas. A la última que yo asistí fue a una del inolvidable Ángel Mayo que dio en València hace ya unos cuantos años con motivo de la versión en concierto del Ocaso en el Palau valenciano. Una conferencia y una ?representación? inolvidables, con Matti y la Behrens. Salut des de València. Rex. |
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Hola Fco. Javier. Todo esto viene a demostrar ciertas cosas que me suponía y algunas de sobre las que en alguna ocasión había leído comentarios: a) Los antiwagnerianos posteriores a la segunda guerra mundial han hecho interpretaciones de las obras de Wagner mucho más nazis que las de los propios nazis. b) Aparte de Hitler, otros miembros de la cúpula nazi no miraban a Wagner con tan buenos ojos (creo recordar que esto incluso lo menciona Mayo en su guía), cosa que va en contra de lo que los antiwagnerianos por cuestiones de corrección política frecuentemente quieren hacernos creer. El dato que me ha sorprendido es el del descenso de representaciones wagnerianas y mozartianas durante la época nazi, frente al aumento de otras. Interesante. Saludos. |
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"Wagner operas, like Mozart’s (Mozart was the other great composer whose operas became less frequently performed under the Nazis) encourage people to think, to become dissatisifed with their lives and their ideas, and that is not something that is greatly admired, or tolerated, in a Nazi cultural worldview. Much better to give the people simple affecting tunes, with tearful sentimentality alternating with romantic comedy, and not too much in the way of ideas." Estoy muy de acuerdo con esto. Wagner (y Mozart también) nos hacen pensar, replantearnos cosas, nos transmiten de una manera muy inmediata e intuitiva la problemática de las relaciones humanas. Curiosamente, centrándonos en Wagner, ni en las interpretaciones filo-nazis de Wagner ni en las tendencioso-antiwagnerianas aparece nada de esto (para mí la clave del Wagner dramaturgo). Se ignora deliberadamente. Saludos. |
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| Vamos, que los otros ponentes dieron "un baño" a la señora Sala. Además siendo el testimonio de Luis, podemos considerarlo fiable, no es persona que se deje guiar por el apasionamiento. |
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I’m going to continue to waive the goat, to resile utterly from the goat, and move some way further down the Great Chain of Being to Alfred Rosenberg. 1. "The Fountainhead", by A. R. I’ll get one thing out of the way first. I searched back in the annals of this group to make sure I wasn’t going to repeat information that had already been posted (or not too much, anyway). And I found that a few years back a couple of angry Wagnerphobes had claimed that Alfred Rosenberg had named Wagner as one of the "four fountainheads of National Socialism". But they never gave chapter and verse on this, even after someone, possibly Monte (and where the hell is Monte, anyway?), challenged them on the point. In the last couple of weeks I’ve read quite a lot of Rosenberg, and this alleged Rosenberg remark has not turned up. Moreover, it’s clear from Rosenberg’s writing that this is not a view that Rosenberg ever held. Still, Rosenberg clearly had no hesitation in saying things that he can’t have believed, if the occasion called for it, so quite it’s possible that this is a genuine quote. And possible that it is not; I wouldn’t be surprised or shocked either way. But unless I find this alleged quote, or someone provides a credible and checkable citation for it, I’m going to ignore it from here on. 2. Rosenberg Resources Anyway, I’ve been reading Rosenberg material in my spare moments these last couple of weeks, checking history texts, too many to name, for commentary and biographical material, and then ploughing my way through the writings of the man himself. So far I’ve read the following of Rosenberg’s work: * _Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts_ * _Sumpf Querschnitte durch das Geistes Leben der November Demo Kratie_ * _Memoirs_ [German title _Portrait eines Menschheitverbrechers_] * _Die Protokolle der Weisen von Zion und der Jüdische Weltpolitik_ * _Race and Race History: Selected Writings of Alfred Rosenberg_, edited and introduced by Robert Pois (mostly selections from the _Mythus_, not very well translated); * Such Rosenberg speeches and _Volkische Beobachter_ articles as I could find in published anthologies, also on dodgy websites run by lonely, angry white males. I’ve also been reading a lot of Goebbels while chasing this issue, and I’ve got to say that staggering into a university library lift with a vast heap of Nazi primary literature in your arms is not an experience I recommend. Girls will avoid you. On the other hand lonely, angry white males will try to strike up conversations. I’ve ordered two other Rosenberg books: * _Blut und Ehre : ein Kampf für deutsche Wiedergelam : Reden und Aufsätze von 1919 - 1933_; and * Kampf um die macht : aufsätze von 1921-1932 For my pains. If those two books add any important information on Rosenberg’s view of Wagner, I’ll post it. But for now I’ll focus on _Der Myth des XX Jahrhunderts_, which I’ll call "the _Mythus_" from now on, and the _Memoirs_, written by Rosenberg in Allied custody after the war. That’s my focus because the _Sumpf_, the _Protokolle der Weisen von Zion_, plus all the Rosenberg articles and speeches I’ve consulted contain no mentions of Wagner at all. Except for an article on Beethoven that mentions Wagner’s name in passing. I’m not going to keep repeating the point that Rosenberg didn’t mention Wagner in this book or that book, or this article or that speech. The reality is, Wagner was not important to Rosenberg, and Rosenberg seldom mentioned Wagner except when exalting the German people by reeling off a list of names of Great Dead Germans, and - as we shall see - mostly not even then. 3. The _Mythus_: Overview The _Mythus_ is a shambolic, rambling rant. It was neither an organised survey of ideas nor a coherent argument. I’m not going to attempt a summary, because you might as well try to summarise an 11-year old boy’s bedroom. But here’s a one-liner, anyway: Rosenberg’s _Mythus_ is an incoherent mix of political ideas that were extreme, violent and - if you’ll pardon the expression - evil, together with a great mass of material on cultural and artistic matters that is distinguished mainly by its banality. 4. The politics of the _Mythus_ The political doctrines are largely what you’d expect a Nazi ideologue to expound. The "Myth" of Rosenberg’s title was essentially the supposed story of the Nordic, or Aryan or Germanic (these terms used interchangeably) peoples, who are responsible for all the great civilisations of history, and in general have the right to expand their land and to rule lesser peoples. By "myth" he did not mean that this story was not true, but rather that it was a sustaining story that the Germanic peoples could take to heart and use to guide and realise their destiny, which was to build and rule a great empire. Another aspect of the myth is the glorification of war and conquest, and the promotion of the military "virtues": "A belief, a Myth, is only real when it has grasped the entire man. In the best interests of the future, all political, tactical and propagandist considerations must step back. Frederick The Great’s concept of honour, Moltke’s method of discipline and Bismarck’s sacred will - these are the three powers which, embodied in different personalities in varied mixture, serve only one thing: the honour of the German nation. This is the Myth that must determine the type of the future German." [_Mythus_, Book III, chap 2] Democracy is of course despised. And while Rosenberg’s writings on Jews do not quite use the word "extermination", it is not unreasonable to see in the _Mythus_ the spirit not just of Kristallnacht but also of the Holocaust: "Marriages between Germans and Jews must be forbidden, at least as long as Jews generally remain upon German soil. That the Jews lose their rights of citizenship and must be subject to a new law appropriate to them, is self evident. Sexual intercourse, rape, and so on, between Germans and Jews must be, according to the gravity of the case, punished by confiscation of property, expulsion, jail and death." "The law of the coming Reich will sweep here with an iron broom. It will fulfil the words of Lagarde concerning Jews. He said that one cannot convert plague bacilli, but must render them harmless as quickly as possible." [_Mythus_, Book III, chapter 4] Rosenberg’s political ideas range between very different from Wagner’s, and utterly opposed to Wagner’s. On race, Wagner rejected even Gobineau’s theories, which were considerably less virulent than Rosenberg’s racist theories. And Wagner (after a jingoistic interlude for the Franco-Prussian War, which soon turned to disillusionment) despised militarism, was disgusted by the Prussian program of re-armament, made sure that his son didn’t do military training, and argued for a peaceful Europe. On democracy, Wagner despised the German system but admired American democracy. There’s more to be said on Wagner’s ideas concerning systems of government, but not here. (This was not an issue that was important to Wagner, so he said little on it. It has become important not because of what Wagner said so much as what others have said about him. So it’s worth clarifying his view on democracy; some other time.) And Wagner called for Jews and Germans to assimilate and become "one and indivisible". But that topic has been discussed before, from time to time. 5. The "fountainheads" of the _Mythus_’s political ideas If you relied on second and third hand sources, especially some of the wilder Wagnerphobes, also pop books and websites concerning topics like Nazi conspiracy theories, Nazis and the occult, etc, then you might think that the _Mythus_ is based on a combination of the works of Wagner and Nietzsche. It isn’t, of course. This is untrue of Nietzsche as well as of Wagner. In his _Memoirs_ Rosenberg admitted to having been "unimpressed" when he read Nietzsche, and though he was never overtly dismissive of Nietzsche in the books, articles and speeches he wrote before and during the Nazi era, he never made much use of Nietzsche, either. And if you relied on reading the _Mythus_ itself, you’d form the idea that Rosenberg formed his political ideology out of six main sources. These are, in order of importance: * The ideas on race and caste (at least as interpreted by Rosenberg) expressed in various Indian texts; * The ideas of the Christian mystic/theologian, Meister Eckehart; * The nationalist, racist and antisemitic ideas of Paul de Lagarde; * The ideas of poet, novelist and philosopher Johann von Goethe, as well as Goethe’s example as a great German with a powerful will; * The ideas of the philosopher and moralist, and also, unfortunately, racist and antisemite, Immanuel Kant; * The ideas of philosopher and antisemite Arthur Schopenhauer. However, there are two important sources for Rosenberg’s ideas that Rosenberg himself tended to avoid acknowledging. The reasons for Rosenberg’s obfuscation are quite straightforward and do not involve conspiracies, occult orders, secret codes, and the like. First, it seems that almost the whole of Rosenberg’s political outlook was formed in Russia, where he grew up amongst the White Russian community, and from where he fled to Germany in 1917, as a result of the Russian Revolution. That is, the true "fountainhead" of Rosenberg’s ideology is the Russian extreme Right. The key ideas, including the extreme militarism, the extreme authoritarianism, the extreme anti-communism, and the extreme and murderous antisemitism, were all commonplaces of Rosenberg’s own Russian background. He brought them with him to Germany, along with the _Protocols of the Elders of Zion_, which evolved into its current form as an antisemitic document in Russia. Rosenberg had two reasons for not acknowledging this source for his ideology. The first and most important reason is that to do so would emphasise his own non-German origin, which would not be especially helpful to his position in an extreme nationalist German movement. The second reason is that (apparently) he plagiarised not just his ideas but substantial chunks of his writing from far-right White Russian sources, and he did not wish to draw attention to this either. Given the importance of Rosenberg to the formation of Nazi ideology, at least in the early 1920s, it’s worth making the observation that some of the energy currently being spent trawling through the works of German Enlightenment figures and the German Romantics, looking for remarks that can be cited out of context as vaguely proto-Nazi content, could be better spent looking at White Russian sources, that actually did promote an ideology that valued violence, militarism, cruelty, authoritarianism and murderous antisemitism. But that’s someone else’s issue. Second, far less important than the White Russian sources but still significant, is Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s _Grundlagen des XIX Jahrhunderts_. There Rosenberg’s borrowing was not nearly as significant as from the White Russians, but it was greater than Rosenberg acknowledged. That is, Rosenberg seems to have relied on Chamberlain’s potted version of Gobineau’s race theories - theories that Wagner rejected - more directly than he relied on Gobineau’s own work. However in general he presented these racial theories as if they were his own, giving only limited credit to Chamberlain, and virtually none to Gobineau, who is not mentioned at all in the _Mythus_. Rosenberg’s borrowing from Chamberlain was not really ideological, but more a matter of Chamberlain providing a historical, or rather pseudo-historical, framework for his account of the Aryan race. I think Rosenberg’s motive for minimising the extent of his borrowing from Chamberlain was simply his desire to shine as an original thinker and researcher, which is harder if you admit that you used a crib. So the actual "fountainheads" of Rosenberg’s ideology can be summed up as: * White Russian antisemitism, militarism, anticommunism, authoritarianism, and other values including "hardness"; * Indian ideas on race and caste, at least as understood by Rosenberg; * The mysticism of Meister Eckehart; * The nationalism, racism and antisemitism of Paul de Lagarde; * Certain aspects of the German intellectual tradition, particularly in relation to the "will", "Germanness" and antisemitism, especially the work of Goethe, Kant and Schopenhauer; * Chamberlain’s racial pseudo-history. The order reflects my own estimate of the relative importance of these sources to Rosenberg. 6. The _Mythus_ and Art and Music Rosenberg thought of himself as a man of taste and erudition, and he was clearly proud of his cultural criticism. However his ideas about art and music were utterly banal. Still, Rosenberg actually spent much more time and space discussing artistic matters in the _Mythus_ than political or racial questions. In art, including music, Rosenberg liked Biedermeier best of all, as well as Volkish art. He seems to have liked music that made use of German oral traditions or German folk tunes, that was simple enough to be played or sung by amateurs. He liked songs and marches better than he liked opera, especially durchkomponiert opera like Wagner. And in opera his preferred form was Singspiel. But when Rosenberg wanted to show himself off as an appreciator of the great composers, the names he cited most often were Bach and Beethoven. Honestly, I’m getting to Rosenberg and Wagner, and I think a couple of relevant Rosenberg quotations will be things that people haven’t seen before. But it’ll have to be next time, because once again it’s bedtime in Oz. Cheers! Laon Date: 2004-08-13 00:09:09 PST Thanks to Mike. I am finally stirring myself to do something about publishing. On the goat front I was working on some complicated pun on letting zygotes be zygotes, or some such, but I’ve put it in the too hard basket. I’d rather avoid goats than void them, that’s for sure. And speaking of tidying up, I’ll do two pieces of housekeeping before getting to Rosenberg’s view of Wagner. Rosenberg and the White Russians: Sources First, I wrote that Rosenberg’s political ideas derived almost entirely from Russian sources, and added that chunks of Rosenberg’s writing were cribbed from White Russian sources. There are many sources for the general question of the Russian origins of Rosenberg’s ideas, but in relation to Rosenberg’s adoption of chunks of text from White Russian sources, my source was Walter Laqueur’s _Russia and Germany: A Century of Conflict_, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1965. Kater: A correction Second, I said that Kater had made up a quote from _Mein Kampf_, in which Hitler supposedly spoke of his "early total devotion" to Wagner. I should have checked more carefully. Kater didn’t make it up; he just changed some wording, slightly, though enough that I didn’t immediately recognise it. But that failure was more my fault than Kater’s. In the passage where he mentioned having seen _Lohengrin_ as a youth, Hitler commented that at the time his "enthusiasm for the Bayreuth master knew bounds," the context indicating that the enthusiasm referred to the Wagner operas that he saw at Linz. Kater’s version "total devotion to Wagner" changes enthusiasm ("strong interest or admiration") to "devotion" ("devoutness, divine worship") and moves the context from performances at Linz to a more general statement. The change is minor, but Kater’s enhanced version bolstered his argument that Hitler based his politics on Wagner, while the statement in its original form does not really do that. But Kater’s paraphrase is defensible, and though I have reservations about it I certainly withdraw it as an example of bad faith. But I’ll give two other examples of the sort of thing that caused me concern. Kater said, "There is no question that Hitler ... considered himself Wagner’s direct successor". And in setting out the ways in which Hitler supposedly saw himself as Wagner’s successor, Kater by implication attributed to Wagner the wish to save the German people, "who in turn were defined and united by purity of blood". [page 36] It’s not surprising that Kater doesn’t give his source for Hitler supposedly considering himself to be "Wagner’s direct successor", because the source is the Rauschning/Reeves _Hitler Speaks_ hoax: "I acknowledge only one predecessor: Richard Wagner." Even there, "Hitler" was likening his strength of will to Wagner’s, not his ideas. More importantly, the impliation that Wagner thought that Germans were defined or united by "purity of blood" is utterly untrue. Wagner didn’t even think Germans were a racial group, and he wrote that they were defined, if at all, by a language and some cultural attitudes. On page 39 Kater wrote, "the composer’s neo-pagan ideas bolstered Hitler’s ideas about a new German secular state." Now, a TV evangelist might link "neo-pagan ideas" and "secularism" in this way, perhaps making them part of a Satanic conspiracy, but surely an academic knows better than to conflate these two very different worldviews. And Kater’s claim that Wagner’s ideas were "neo-pagan" is mischievous nonsense, as anyone who has read his essays and the _Diaries_ must know; and Kater clearly has. The "neo-pagan" claim is misleading rhetoric presumably based on the fact that the _Ring_ concerns Wotan, Freia and other pagan figures. By that logic Wagner must also have believed in ghost ships, the goddess Venus, that the worshippers of Wodan, Freya and co are evil (as is the case in _Lohengrin_), love potions, and magic girls made of plants. And finally, we get to Rosenberg on Wagner. 7. The _Mythus_ and Wagner In one sense, Wagner is conspicuous in the _Mythus_ by his absences. That is, Rosenberg habitually ran out lists of the great figures of German culture. And when he did this, Wagner seemed not to have come readily to his mind, even when he was specifically listing great German composers. Here are some examples: "Goethe, Schiller, Kant, and so on." "The awakening of Germany, however, led from Luther to Goethe, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Lagarde, and today it approaches, with powerful strides, its full bloom." [From the Preface] "They created all the foundations of Nordic western culture. Without Coligny and Luther there would have been no Bach, no Goethe, no Leibniz, no Kant." "Copernicus, Kant and Goethe". "Copernicus and Leonardo, the religious nobility of Eckehart and Lagarde, or the political nobility of Frederick the Great and Bismarck." [From Book I, chap 1] "When the spirit of Eckehart fell silent, Germanic painting arose. The soul of J. S. Bach resounded; Goethe’s _Faust_ was created, Beethoven’s Ninth, Kant’s philosophy..."; "the works of da Vinci, Rembrandt, Bach and Goethe ... the works of Michelangelo, Shakespeare, and Beethoven. Immanuel Kant..." [From Book I, chapter 3] "Our music lends itself readily to such uses. Its heroic nature was established in Bach and Glück, in Mozart, Handel and Beethoven." "A new series of spirits will succeed Odin, Siegfried, Widukind, Friedrich III, the Hohenstaufen, Eckehart, Walther von der Vogelweide, Luther, Frederick the Great, Bach, Goethe, Beethoven, Schopenhauer, Bismarck, and other such Germans." [From Book III, chap 5] And so on. The omission of Wagner from such lists is not strong evidence of anything, of course, but I mention it because it occurs often enough to be noticeable. It’s not that Rosenberg never mentioned Wagner, only that Wagner was a comparatively minor figure. I may have overlooked some examples, but I found mention of Wagner in four such lists, outside of Book II, chapter 4, which includes a substantial discussion of Wagner. Here they are: * Wagner was included in a list of "humans" who "struggled", along with Achilles, Faust, Leonardo, and Frederick the Great [Book I, chap 2] * Wagner was included in this odd list of "Nordic" men, several of whom are entirely or mostly fictitious characters: "Don Quixote, Hamlet, Parsifal, Faust, Rembrandt, Beethoven, Goethe, Wagner and Nietzsche"; [Book I, chap 3] * Wagner was highlighted, with a quote from one of his letters to Matthilde Wesendonck, along with Beethoven, Rembrandt, da Vinci and church architect Ulrich van Ensingen, as someone with "artistic, aesthetic will"; [Book II, chap 1] * In a paragraph on Nietzsche, who supposedly had "foresight" of changes coming in an "insane world", Wagner and Lagarde are also named. [Book III, chap 3] But the discussion of Wagner in Book II, chapter 4 is far more interesting. Rosenberg started with a discussion of Tristan and Hans Sachs, saying both have "the feeling of loneliness and infinity" which is a characteristic of "western nature". He added that people are wrong to see _Tristan und Isolde_ as a love story, as the drama is really about honour. Rosenberg claimed that Tristan chose to die because he had lost his honour by betraying Mark. For Rosenberg the real highlight in the drama was not anything that passed between Tristan and Isolde, but the confrontation between Tristan and Mark at the end of Act II. Based on this interpretation, which seems both eccentric and psychologically revealing, Rosenberg judged that _Tristan_ was indeed a "Germanic" story. Rosenberg then veered away from Wagner to discuss Beethoven, Berlioz and general aesthetic topics. In passing he entered Wagner into another list, this one of things that illustrate "the life rhythm of western Art", including "the scherzo of a Beethoven, the final concluding deed of the hundred year old Faust, the heroic greatness of Wagner’s Siegfried, the smiling conquest of tragedy by Hans Sachs, the mysticism of Meister Eckehart". In another list from chapter 4 (I’ll mention it here though it came after the discussion of Wagner that I’m about to describe) Rosenberg quoted Nietzsche listing people with strong, enduring natures: "Beethoven, Goethe, Schopenhauer and Wagner". The substantive discussion of Wagner began on page 428. Rosenberg said that Wagner had "declared dance, music and poetry to be one art, and attributed the fragmentation of his times to the fact he believed that each one of the three arts had been isolated". Rosenberg then set about attacking Wagner’s aesthetic theories, after first making a concession of Wagner’s greatness, as cited by Kater: "The cultural achievement of Bayreuth will remain forever beyond question." As I’ve noted, Rosenberg continued: "But nevertheless, today a turning away from the basic teachings of Wagner has begun, away from the assertion that dance, music and the poetic art are forever linked in the manner proclaimed by him; and away from the assertion that Bayreuth was, in fact, the unchangeable consummation of the Aryan mystery." Rosenberg began his attack by arguing that drama, the word, is not in fact helped by music. "The formative will of the poet emerged only through the medium of language. As long as the word describes a human conflict, relates an event or mediates a thought process, it is not furthered by music. Any accompanying music destroys the medium for the transference of the will and thoughts. This is revealed in Tristan’s narration in the first act [sic], in Wotan’s dialogues with Brünnhilde, in Alberich’s curse and in the song of the Norns in the prelude to _Götterdämmerung_. Wherever there is the medium for a thought structure, the orchestra gets in the way." Rosenberg then compared the scene of Brünnhilde’s arrival at Gunther’s court, in _Götterdämmerung_ Act II, unfavourably with the beginning of Goethe’s _Egmont_. In Wagner’s case, Rosenberg wrote, "the tone has killed the word". Indeed, Rosenberg declared that the _Ring_ was so ambitious that its failure was inevitable. Rosenberg then argued that the problem was Wagner’s "dogmatic" insistence that music should be continuous. "In the second and third act of _Tristan_ and in the third act of _Meistersinger_", wrote Rosenberg, Wagner’s music formed a barrier, "preventing the word from guiding one into the soul of Tristan, Mark and Hans Sachs. Beethoven’s music for Egmont is the deepest of all music drama. But this music would not enthral the listener to such an extent if the conflicts between Egmont and Orange or between Egmont and Alba were accompanied by the orchestra." Rating Wagner’s music drama as inferior to Beethoven’s incidental music for _Egmont_ was certainly one way to put Wagner in his place. But things were about to get even worse, for Wagner. Rosenberg then argued that Wagnerian music drama prevents the actors from acting scenes at their natural speed, due to the demands of the music. He compared Wagner’s emotional impact unfavourably to "the Hohenfriedberger March, to whose sounds millions have gone to their death, [which shows] how much a heroic sound can produce a will which transforms itself, kinetically, into the highest forms of tensile bodily energy." Wagner, by contrast, cannot inspire such sounds "to which the people respond spiritually and emotionally." The Hohenfriedberger March, by the way, is generally played by brass band, though fife and drum arrangements are not uncommon. Perhaps the most easily accessible recording is on the soundtrack album for Kubrick’s _Barry Lyndon_. No doubt it’s a perfectly good march, as marches go (and I have the sort of juvenile SOH that likes the name: "you want French fries and a shake with your Hohenfriedberger?"), but I can’t help feeling that someone who rated Wagner’s emotional impact below that of the Hohenfriedberger March did not have a high opinion of Wagner’s art. Anyway, after delivering that gobsmacking judgement, Rosenberg continued the onslaught. Because Wagner joined music and dance to the drama, "artistic discords unavoidably arise," he wrote. Rosenberg noted that people used to laugh at the old operas in which the hero would announce his departure but stand there for ten minutes, but that things were often just as bad in Wagner opera. "For example, when Brünnhilde suddenly sees Siegfried at Günther’s court and passionately approaches him, the words of her song hinder the flow of the movement. Moreover, Siegfried must ward her off by gesturing in slow motion, as it were. This holds true of most scenes in Rheingold between the gods and the giants." Rosenberg stressed that his criticisms were not of incidental features of Wagner’s art, but were central to the nature of Wagner’s art. "These observations do not represent a criticism of unimportant things. They are aimed at something essential, that Wagner and every opera singer must painfully have felt. It has been claimed that the three arts [of drama, dance and music] are not compatible, but, whatever their relation to each other may have been in earlier times, none of them can disregard the law of necessary form without artistic damage, because they are not really one art. An attempt to meld these arts by force destroys their spiritual rhythm and prevents emotional expression and impression. Wagner, whose entire art is a continuous and enormous outpouring of will, frequently gets in his own way. In an odd paradox, some of Wagner’s greatest strengths are also weaknesses. Most participants in Wagnerian music drama unconsciously feel this, without being able to explain their feeling of being ill at ease." The attack now largely done with, Rosenberg then declared that his purpose was not "to denigrate Wagner’s work". He wrote, "Richard Wagner is one of those artists in whom three factors coincide, each of which form a part of our entire artistic life: the Nordic ideal of beauty as it appears outwardly in Lohengrin and Siegfried, linked to deepest feeling for nature; the inner will of man in Tristan and Isolde; and the struggle for the highest value of Nordic western man: heroic honour, linked with inner truthfulness. This inner ideal of beauty is realised in Wotan, in King Mark and in Hans Sachs." Even then, Rosenberg could not sustain the positive tone for long. He finished with: "On the other hand _Parsifal_ is a strongly emphasised weakening of the will in favour of a borrowed value." [These translations from Rosenberg are mine, though I’ve used earlier translations as cribs. I’ve done my best with text that sometimes seriously resists making sense, as, for example, with that last sentence dismissing _Parsifal_.] To sum up, Rosenberg argued that Wagner’s aesthetic theories were false and harmful. Of Wagner’s mature works he rejected _Parsifal_ on ideological grounds, and declared the _Ring_ to be a failure. He said that _Tristan_ and _Meistersinger_ were masterpieces. But he did not leave even that limited approbation of Wagner untouched. Rosenberg argued that Tristan’s narration [sic] in Act I was aesthetically "destroyed" by the accompanying music, which he subsequently said also prevented one from empathising with Tristan and Mark in Acts II and III. So _Tristan_ is a masterpiece, according to Rosenberg, except for the music of Acts I, II and III. It’s interesting, by the way, that Rosenberg thought that it was Tristan rather than Isolde who delivered a long narration in _Tristan_ Act I. He was perhaps not as familiar with this "masterpiece" as he claimed. _Meistersinger_ fared much better, as only the music for Act III was condemned. So what we have, in summation, is Alfred Rosenberg’s ringing endorsement of the artistic merit of Acts I and II of Wagner’s _Meistersinger_. All the rest of the mature Wagner was dismissed, on one ground or another. Ill leave the _Mythus_ with Rosenberg’s interesting footnote to his discussion of Wagner. In this note he complained that the _Ring_ is too hard to perform, and that the symbolic effects of the _Ring_ and _Parsifal_ are too "technical". After acknowledging that Tristan and Hans Sachs will always hold the stage, he wrote, "the _Ring_ will either have to be completely reformed by a similarly gifted hand, or it will gradually disappear from the theatre." Rosenberg objected to the _Ring_ and _Parsifal_ on both aesthetic and ideological grounds. Frederick Spotts, in his Bayreuth book (page 166), quoted Rosenberg as saying that the _Ring_ was "neither German nor heroic". So the two Wagner works that Rosenberg particularly singled out for deprecation happen to be the two works that came in for performance bans or restrictions in the Nazi period. They did indeed "gradually disappear from the theatre." So we’ve established a motive for, shall we say, de-emphasising Wagner in general and _Parsifal_ and the _Ring_ in particular, in German cultural life. Obviously we should also consider means and opportunity. Though first I’ll look at what Rosenberg said about Wagner in the _Memoirs_, written after the Nazis were defeated and he was in Allied custody. Actually, before that I’m going canoeing and tenting on the Hawkesbury River, something I’ve wanted to do ever since I arrived in Australia, so the next post may be a couple of days away. Cheers! Laon Date: 2004-08-15 04:03:47 PST Michael wrote: > To say that there would have been "no Kant without Luther" is a kind of > literary device that sounds profound, but is more often than not > meaningless. [...] does it really say anything worthwhile? Actually, it never occured to me to take any of Rosenberg’s ideas seriously, or even engage with them as ideas. But having given them the required moment’s thought, I’d observe that Rosenberg’s musings on Wagner strike me as utterly moronic. But I’m not writing about Rosenberg because I want to engage his ghost in debate. Rather, Rosenberg’s views on Wagner are of historical interest because they may help explain the reduction in performance of Wagner opera during the Third Reich. And in some cases what Rosenberg wrote is of psychological interest, about the psychopathology of an evil man who was rightly hanged for crimes against humanity. Which brings me to the _Memoirs_, written by Rosenberg while in Allied custody. Or nearly to the _Memoirs_, because there are two other pieces of housekeeping I’d like to do first. 1. Which Fred? First, I mentioned that Hitler had listed Luther, Frederick Barbarossa and Wagner as great reformers in their respective fields. That should have been Frederick the Great, not Frederick Barbarossa. Thanks to a correspondent for straightening my Freds out. 2. "Paganism" Second, secondary sources on Rosenberg quite often claim that the _Mythus_ promoted neo-paganism, in the sense of wanting to resurrect the Norse gods, Wotan/Odin, Freya and so on, and claim that he was anti-Christian. Less frequent but still common is the claim that Wagner likewise sought to restore these old Norse gods. The two claims combined create a further spurious link from Wagner to Nazism. In actuality, obviously, Wagner had no interest in encouraging worship of Wotan and co, any more than he thought people should worship Stolzing or Pognor; they were just operatic characters. So even if the story were correct about Rosenberg, it would still have nothing to do with Wagner. But it is not correct about Rosenberg either. (To point this out is not in any sense to "defend" him; he was an evil man, and he would not have been a worse man if he had been a pagan, or a better man if he had been Catholic or a Protestant.) But from what Rosenberg wrote in the _Mythus_, it is not accurate to call Rosenberg a "pagan", and it is something of an over-simplification to say that he was anti-Christian. Rosenberg did write in the _Mythus_ that worship of Odin/Wotan and the rest of that pantheon had in the past been an inspiring and unifying force for the so-called Nordic peoples. That’s where this myth of Rosenberg as pagan appears to have arisen. But Rosenberg also wrote that Wotan and those other gods were dead, and said quite clearly specified that he did not propose resurrecting them or their worship. He reiterated this in the Preface to the Third Edition, to ensure that the myth would not persist. It was a convenient myth, though, and it did. But in reality what Rosenberg did promote was a version of Christianity. Not an orthodox version, of course. Rosenberg disliked almost all orthodox versions of Christianity. In particular he was as anti-Catholic as he was anti-Judaic, and he disliked most Protestant denominations as well. He was likely to see ordinary Christians as potential ideological enemies, if they were devout. However at least on the evidence of the _Mythus_ (there may be other Rosenberg religious discussions that I’m unaware of), what Rosenberg seems to favoured was a version of Christianity, primarily based on the Gospel of John, which is the gospel that most emphasised Jesus’ divine origin and least emphasises his Semitic humanity, mixed with and filtered through the ideas of Meister Eckehart. That mix is not ordinary Christianity (some sources suggest a resemblance to Catharism, but that’s outside of my area of knowledge or interest), but it is not paganism, either. It would be most accurate to define Rosenberg as a Christian heretic who was hostile to mainstream Christianity. And now on to the _Memoirs_. The _Memoirs_ and Wagner The _Memoirs_ represent Rosenberg in somewhat chastened mood, compared to his earlier writing. They are no more reliable, in the sense of honest, than his works written in the heyday of Nazism. They were written before he had been sentenced to hang, and he was careful not to say anything that might weaken his defence. Still, in some ways you sense a more reflective writer. He was still clearly an evil man, but the sad, pathetic side to him was much closer to the surface. I say that without sympathy. It’s an interesting document, but with one exception I’ll restrict myself to the sections that are relevant in the current context. First, on page 38 Rosenberg mentioned his political difficulties with the Gauleiter Hans Schemm, too Christian (in an orthodox sense) to be a good Nazi, according to Rosenberg. Rosenberg’s account suggests that he saw interest in Wagner and especially _Parsifal_ as being something of a danger sign. "Hans Schemm was a teacher totally under the spell of Bayreuth’s music, and particularly, as I found out in 1924, of _Parsifal_. In 1933 he became Bavarian Secretary of Education, and started out on a consciously Christian course. His old motto, ’Our politics are Germany, our religion is Christ’, was honourable; but in its official tone he went far beyond the tolerance agreed on." I wouldn’t read too much into that passage, in isolation, but it appears consistent with Rosenberg’s view on _Parsifal_ as expressed in the _Mythus_, written about 20 years earlier. Second, on page 43 Rosenberg mentioned Wagner’s antisemitism, though Wagner was not singled out. "The Jewish question is as old as Jewry itself, as antisemitism has always been the response whenever Jews have appeared on the scene, from Tacitus to Goethe, Schopenhauer, Wagner and Dostoevsky." What is perhaps interesting is that earlier on that page Rosenberg addressed the question of whether the Nazis’ murderous antisemitism derived from pre-20th Century sources. Given that Rosenberg was fighting, or wriggling, for his life, you might expect that he would try to root the Nazi genocide in a historical tradition, but he explicitly did not. "It must be said that orders for the mass annihilation of the Jewish people, such as Hitler gave, had previously not even occurred to the harshest opponents of Jewry." I certainly don’t suggest that this statement of Rosenberg’s "settles" any issue. I don’t believe Rosenberg even when he says things that I think are true, if you see what I mean. He was a tactical speaker, not an honest one. Still, it is interesting that he said this, which was in a sense against his own interests. On page 60, Rosenberg wrote something that is not directly relevant to our topic, but so revealing that I’ll share it. "Hitler knew very well, of course, that I understood art and culture much more deeply than Goebbels, who could hardly look beyond the mere surface. In spite of this he left the leadership in a field he loved passionately in the hands of this man because, as I realised at many future occasions, Goebbels was able to give Hitler the kind of setting I should never have been able to contrive. Goebbels took beautiful and gifted artists and great actresses to the Führer. He told him stories about life among artists. He fed the theatrical element in his nature with gorgeously mounted products of the lighter Muses, thus providing that relaxation which the Führer, under the constant pressure of foreign policy and economic problems, simply had to have. Whenever the Führer happened to be in Berlin, Göbbels always had lunch with him. "When I ate with the Führer, once every three or four weeks, he usually sat around with us, too. He invariably had a new story to tell, or made some little malevolent remark about this or that person. This was his approved method of entertaining the Führer, and of slowly building up in him an aversion toward certain people. Occasionally he was actually quite amusing. He also played the role of an art enthusiast rather effectively whenever Hitler spoke about something outstandingly beautiful in the field of the new sculpture, and shrewdly enlarged upon whatever sarcastic remarks the Führer might make in connection with some event. "At night Hitler frequently invited one or another person for a long talk before the fireplace. Goebbels, Ley, and a few others were favourites, outside of the usual group at table. I can’t speak with authority because I was never invited. This was no doubt the time when emotion held sway, and most of the passionate decisions made must have been born during these hours." Here Rosenberg revealed more than his hatred of Goebbels, who he elsewhere called a "vain and theatrical varlet" [page 48]. First, in this tale of exclusion, the bitterness no longer effectively concealed, he revealed something of the outsider’s rage that I suspect drove much of his career. Second, Rosenberg’s apparent failure to realise how others were likely to read that passage, as reflecting not just on Goebbels but also on himself, is remarkable. It’s a suggestive lack of social awareness, a lack of insight into other human beings or himself. Of course Rosenberg was still artful. The words "most of the passionate decisions made must have been born during these hours" were Rosenberg’s way of distancing himself from the Holocaust, which Rosenberg blamed on Himmler, Bormann and Goebbel’s influence on Hitler, and which he claimed, of course, to have known nothing about. And finally, the following are the last words that Rosenberg wrote about Wagner. "Adolf Hitler, the fascinated disciple of Richard Wagner, listened to the Nibelungenlied [sic] in the Linz Theatre. I had someone point out to me the pillar where he used to stand. Now, like Wotan, he wanted to build a Valhalla, but when the will to power separated from justice this castle fell to dust. Hitler experienced Wotan’s tragedy in his own person without being warned by it; and he buried Germany under the ruins of his Valhalla. Yes, we must never disdain agreements, nor ever allow a Loki to whisper evil counsel into our ears." [Page 115] Rosenberg got the name of the _Ring of the Nibelung_ wrong, but given what he said about Wagner in general and the _Ring_ in particular in the _Mythus_, that’s hardly surprising. But Rosenberg’s conclusion was that if Hitler had in fact taken Wagner’s warnings to heart, then he would not have pursued power without the "right", would not have broken his treaties and other agreements, and would not have listened to the "evil counsel" of first Goebbels, and later Himmler and Bormann as well. That "evil counsel", Rosenberg argued elsewhere in the _Memoirs_, was responsible for both the Nazi aggression and the Nazi crimes against humanity. Rosenberg was a liar fighting for his own neck, and still trying to preserve a shred of Hitler’s reputation, and so anything he said should be weighed lightly. Still, his last word on the topic was that if Hitler had really listened to Wagner, then the war, the Holocaust, and much else would not have happened. I think that this is true, though I do not believe Rosenberg. More to come. Laon Date: 2004-08-17 15:53:07 PST Michael wrote: > I’d like to say that Rosenberg’s idea (that > if only Hitler had cared a bit more for law, property rights, and contracts > the German Valhalla, or Reich would have somehow worked out OK) is beyond > absurd. Rosenberg’s analogy is, as Laon states, self serving and in my own > mind grotesquely melodramatic. But although Rosenberg’s comment on the _Ring_ is self-serving, it’s still interesting for showing that at least one senior Nazi was aware, at least in 1946, that the "warning" conveyed in the _Ring_ was incompatible and opposed to Nazi policies and actions. Rosenberg singled out breaches of treaties, which meant no invasions of other countries, and no following "evil counsel", which in the _Memoir_’s terminology meant no Holocaust. Probably his intention was to suggest that National Socialism would have been okay without those "mistakes". Still, although Rosenberg’s remark was absurd, melodramatic and self-serving, there is a sense in which it was true. That is, if Hitler had really understood the _Ring_’s message concerning love (good) versus the quest for power (evil and doomed), and had really acted as if guided by that message, then he couldn’t even have taken the leadership of the Nazi Party, let alone all that followed from that. But though this is true, it’s also an absurd observation. A Hitler who was even capable of understanding the _Ring_’s message on love versus power, and of applying that message to his own conduct, would not have been Hitler. That’s the trouble with imaginary alternative histories; they’re imaginary. Anyway, we’ve seen that Rosenberg disliked Wagner’s aesthetic theories in general, and the _Ring_ and _Parsifal_ in particular, with rservations about all of the nature Wagner operas. (He said very little about the earlier romantic operas.) So he had a motive for "de-emphasising" Wagner opera performances in the cultural program of the Third Reich. The question is whether he put his antagonism to Wagner into practice. Bayreuth’s artistic director Heinz Tietjen certainly thought so. In his _Bayreuth: A History of the Wagner Festival_ Frederick Spotts quoted Tietjen singling out Rosenberg not as the only senior Nazi antagonistic to Wagner’s works, but as the most overt. "’In reality the leading party officials throughout the Reich were _hostile_ to Wagner ... Germany believed and believes still in a "Hitler Bayreuth" that never was. The party tolerated Hitler’s Wagner enthusiasm, but fought, openly or covertly, those who, like me, were devoted to his works - the people around Rosenberg openly, those around Goebbels overtly.’" Heinz Tietjen, quoted in Spotts, Frederick, _Bayreuth: A History of the Wagner Festival_, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1994, page 166. Here’s is a brief(ish) account of the extent of Rosenberg’s influence in the Nazi Party, and its trajectory. Probably nothing of what follows will be new to most people. I’m just collecting this together to establish that Rosenberg had means and opportunity, as well as motive. That is, Rosenberg had a relevant role and he had the necessary influence. Note that "means, motive, opportunity" is the formula for establishing a circumstantial case. There is no smoking gun, no direct evidence such as a directive, an announcement or a memo. Basically the trajectory of Rosenberg’s career is one of a rapid rise to the top of the Nazi Party, which he led for a few months in 1924, followed by a slow and steady loss of power, influence and importance. Rosenberg was inducted into the Nazi Party in 1920 by Dietrich Eckart, back when there were only a few members. One of his earliest contributions was to introduce the _Protocols of the Elders of Zion_ hoax into Germany, and in other ways to help push the antisemitism of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party to a more vicious and murderous extreme. Alan Bullock (in _Hitler: A Study in Tyranny_) argues that Rosenberg, with Eckart, did more than anyone else to give Hitler a more or less coherent racist ideology, to organise and justify the hatreds that Hitler already felt. In fact the early philosophies and policies of the Nazi Party, insofar as an essentially opportunist outfit had such things, were developed by Rosenberg more than by any other person, including Hitler. In 1923 Rosenberg wrote a book, now largely forgotten, called, _The Nature, Principles and Aims of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party_, which set out the party program. This book formed the basis for the program set out by Hitler in _Mein Kampf_, written the following year. Rosenberg ideas that were taken up by Hitler included the doctrine of the superiority of German Aryan blood, the doctrine of "blood and honour", the adoption of the term and concept "Third Reich" (though the term was not coined by Rosenberg), and the doctrine of "Lebensraum", a demand for German expansion to the East, into Russia, together with the declaration of war against communism. Rosenberg was a principle influence in moving the Nazi Party to the political Right, at the expense of those naïve souls like Röhm and Gregor Strasser who had continued to take seriously the "socialist" part of the Party’s name, and who were disposed of in the Night of the Long Knives. Rosenberg was one of those who helped forge links between the Nazi Party and German business. Hitler recognised Rosenberg’s pre-eminence (and also the ways in which Rosenberg did not have the capacity to be any threat to his leadership) when he went to prison in 1924, after the Beer Hall Putsch. He appointed Rosenberg as leader of the Nazi Party until his release, over such people as Goebbels and Goering. Rosenberg was also the first of the Nazis to have taken an organised interest in cultural affairs, beginning around 1928 with a series of articles in the _Völkischer Beobachter_, a Nazi journal originally established by Eckhart but taken over by Rosenberg in 1923. Rosenberg expanded the paper’s coverage of music, theatre and the visual arts, and his articles in the _Völkischer Beobachter_ (which in those early days he virtually wrote single-handed) essentially formed the basis of the Nazi aesthetic program. This involved attacking most forms of modernism, though with inconsistencies. Realism was praised in the plastic arts, while in music praise was divided between the folk art movement and the great German tradition in baroque, classical and romantic music. Rosenberg was also especially assiduous in finding out the racial origins of composers and performers, and awarding praise or attack according to their supposed racial heritage. Even after Rosenberg lost dominance in the cultural field to Goebbels, the Nazi cultural agenda was still one that had been largely set by Rosenberg. Rosenberg set up the first Nazi organisation dedicated to cultural politics, the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur (League of Fighters for German Culture) in January 1929. The Kampfbund promoted concerts of approved music, and cultural lectures in which approved music was praised and "degenerate" music like that of Krenek and Weill was singled out for abuse. One of those to sign the Kampfbund manifesto was Winifred Wagner. Of course, Rosenberg had not at that time published the _Mythus_, with the overt and sustained attack on Wagner. But Winifred didn’t bail out after that attack was published, nor (more damningly) did she bail out after Nazi thugs organised by the Kampfbund had started to take direct action such as violently breaking up performances of, for example, Brecht and Weill’s _Mahagonny_. It should be noted that Rosenberg’s aversion was to the Wagner operas, especially the mature operas, and specially the _Ring_ and _Parsifal_; that aversion did not extend to cover concert extracts from the Wagner operas, especially from the early operas. So concerts sponsored by the Kampfbund included excerpts of Wagner’s music, such as the _Holländer_ and _Tannhäuser_ overtures, the preludes to Acts I and III of _Lohengrin_, and so on. And in vocal recitals, pieces like Elsa’s Dream, Senta’s Ballad, or the Song to the Evening Star might be programmed along with Weber, Beethoven, Schubert etc. The Kampfbund had 38,000 members by October 1933, and was at that time the most powerful cultural organisation in Nazi Germany. So at the commencement of the Third Reich Rosenberg was principally responsible for the Reich’s basic cultural program, and was apparently the most powerful figure in cultural affairs. The rest of the story is Rosenberg’s steady loss of power and influence, from that height. Rosenberg had three important weaknesses. First, he seems to have been an awkward and remarkably charmless man. Even the other Nazis didn’t like him. Therefore he started being frozen out socially from the inner circles, which meant he lost proximity and access to Hitler, and therefore power and influence. Second, Hitler respected Rosenberg to some extent as an ideologue, but did not think him a competent administrator. Hitler was probably closer to Rosenberg than to Goebbels on many issues of cultural policy, but Goebbels had a track record of getting things done quickly and efficiently, while Rosenberg did not. This seems to be the principal reason why Goebbels was appointed as Reichsminister for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, with powers in matters of cultural policy that Rosenberg had expected to be given. Third, Rosenberg was seen as a bit of a true believer, fanatical, tactless, and unwilling to compromise in the face of political realities, while Goebbels was a more pragmatic operator, willing to overlook Nazi cultural principles (for example concerning artists with Jewish ancestry or suspect politics) in order to keep things running smoothly. Rosenberg’s steady decline in influence in paralleled by the steady expansion of the cultural influence of his archenemy Goebbels. But I’ll look at Goebbels’ take on Wagner and his probable influence on Wagner performances and related matters in some later posts. Anyway, although Rosenberg steadily lost power and influence, he started that slow decline from an extremely high position, and he never became an insignificant figure. (His lowest point was after the Hitler-Stalin pact, which Rosenberg had vehemently opposed. However he regained some lost power after the German attack on Russia.) In 1933 Rosenberg was appointed as the head of the "Office for the Supervision of the Total Spiritual and Philosophical Education and development of the NDSAP", which was a Party position rather than the Government Ministry that Rosenberg had expected. As was Hitler’s habit, the respective powers and responsibilities of Rosenberg’s and Goebbels’ overlapping bureaucracies were never clearly spelled out. But although a better political in-fighter than Rosenberg could have used his position to better advantage (we know that Goebbels won the power struggle with Rosenberg; but that outcome would not have looked certain or inevitable at the time), Rosenberg was completely outmanoeuvred. However, Rosenberg continually won battles even as he steadily lost the war. For example, Rosenberg wanted Expressionist art condemned as a decadent, non-German form, while Goebbels rather liked Expressionism, and wanted it recognised as an expression of German culural vitality. Rosenberg won, as he also did on the matter of Hindemith, whose music Goebbels liked and Rosenberg loathed. So although we do not have any copy of a directive, no memo, it is clear that Rosenberg had the power to have considerable influence on German cultural life. I’d suggest something like the following mechanism. Rosenberg had appointed (or his appointees had appointed) hundreds of local Kampfbund organisers, who at least in the early days of the Reich exercised considerable power in cultural affairs at a local level. After a series of blunders, the power of the Kampfbund officials was reined in. Nevertheless they remained influential, and able to cause headaches for local arts officials, such as opera house managers, in several ways. First, they had access to Kampfbund resources (sufficient to fund the creation of a symphony orchestra, for example), which they could direct elsewhere at local level if they were displeased with a local arts impresario. Second, Rosenberg might be less powerful than Goebbels, but he still had access to the Führer, and it was better not to offend his local people. Third, many of Rosenberg’s people were later absorbed into Goebbels’ organisation, where their power and access to resources generally increased. But their induction and indoctrination, as it were, had been under Rosenberg. Under those circumstances, the director of a local opera house might note comments from a local Kampfbund leader concerning Wagner’s flawed, ungerman, unheroic, aesthetically ill-founded works, or simply read the _Mythus_. In dangerous times, a decision to program Verdi or Lortzing or Puccini was reliably safe; while a decision to program Wagner might not be so safe. Even if Hitler might like to know that a Wagner performance had been scheduled in your local opera house, Rosenberg had more time on his hands to respond to your local choics, and more people on the ground. The consequence is not that Wagner disappeared from the opera houses; he simply became a slightly more difficult, more awkward, programming decision for opera house managers. With the results that we’ve seen. But there’s more to this story of opera politics than just Rosenberg. Goebbels was also a key figure, it seems; I’m beginning a slow slog through his _Diaries_. And there were some quite bizarre aspects to the relationship between the Wagner family and the Third Reich, even Onkel Wolf [Hitler] himself. After a bit of a break from this topic, I’m going to pick up with Siegfried Wagner, and some things that strike me as frankly bizarre - in fact off the scale for melodrama and absurdity - but which also strike me as possibly quite relevant to this issue. To be continued. Laon |
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Richard Wagner era un antisemita reconocido y convencido...por ejemplo solo hay que leer un ensayo suyo como " el judaismo y la música.."..esta todo muy claro... |
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Evidentemente, vargr, Wagner era antisemita, lo que no significa que fuera nazi ni precursor del nazismo. Ahora bien, habría que matizar el asunto ? lo que ya se ha hecho en numerosas ocasiones. Muchos ignorantes, manipulados por el cine de Hoolywood y documentales tendenciosos, así como por su falta de conocimiento de la historia creen que el antisemitismo y la persecución a los judíos es algo propio y circunscrito a Alemania y el nazismo. El antisemitismo es una constante de nuestra sociedad cristiana y occidental, posiblemente por la influencia de la iglesia (los judíos como responsables de la muerte de Cristo, que mira por dónde, también era judío). No hace mucho el Papa pidió perdón por la responsabilidad histórica de la Iglesia en el asunto. Los judíos han sido perseguidos a lo largo del tiempo y del espacio. En España eran habituales las matanzas en las juderías cada vez que sucedía alguna catástrofe (se pensaba que era un castigo divino y los muy ignorantes tenían que buscar algún chivo expiatorio). Lo mismo sucedía en toda Europa, como los famosos progroms rusos. Los judíos no podían acceder a determinados cargos públicos o ejercer determinadas actividades. Parece que ya nadie recuerda el concepto de cristiano viejo y de limpieza de sangre, vigente durante siglos. En toda la literatura europea aparecen alusiones antijudías. En el Cantar de Mío Cid, el mercenario castellano no trata demasiado bien a los judíos Raquel e Vidas (si no recuerdo mal sus nombres). En el Mercader de Venecia de Shakespeare un avaro judío prestamista se cobraba en carne humana si no le pagaban a tiempo. Verdi los pone a parir en más de una de sus obras, etc., etc. En castellano existe la palabra ?judiada?, que significa ?Acción mal intencionada o injusta hecha contra alguien. Lucro excesivo y escandaloso?. ?Judío? aparece como ?Sinónimo de avaro o usurero?. ?Judas? se define como ?Hombre malvado y traidor?. Como se sabe, el lenguaje no es neutral, sino que es el reflejo del pensamiento y de la cultura que lo ha creado. Por otra parte, es conocido que Wagner, a pesar de su antisemitismo, contó con amigos judíos que incluso portaron su ataúd a hombros y uno de sus directores favoritos, elegido para dirigir nada menos que su Parsifal en Bayreuth era judío y amigo tanto de él como de Cósima, el histórico Levi. Así, que ya está bien de colgarle el sambenito de antisemita (por cierto, los árabes, y no sólo los judíos son semitas) y protonazi a Wagner. En caso contrario tendríamos que hacer lo mismo con Shakespeare, Verdi y con todo el Siglo de Oro castellano ?con la excepción de Cervantes, que, según las malas lenguas, procedía de judíos conversos ? ¿Qué culpa tiene W. de que Hitler lo admirara? ¿Acaso Verdi fue precursor del fascismo italiano? ¿Era verdiano Mussolini? Menéndez y Pidal era una gran admirador del Cantar del Mío Cid, ¿acaso era ... qué sé yo? ¿Condenamos la Flauta Mágica y mandamos a la hoguera a Mozart por racista (Monostatos era negro lascivo) y misógino (las alusiones antifemeninas son constantes). Dejemos las cosas en su sitio y no las desquiciemos. Wagner, en este sentido, no era sino un producto del ambiente en el que vivió. Un saludo. Rex. |
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...tienes mucha razon en lo que dices..pero al igual que hay mucha manipulación con el tema de wagner ( por el tema de los judios y hitler )..tambien existe con el nazismo y sobre todo con hitler...teniendo en cuenta que la historia siempre la escriben los vencedores, es normal que a hitler y al nazismo en general, la opinion pública actual lo tengan como lo mas monstruoso de la historia etc etc...lo cual, yo no lo creo....y sobre el tema de los judios, si en toda la historia siempre ha existido esa persecucion contra ellos, sera por algo...no creo que sean tan santitos como quieren parecer siempre a la opinion publica, agarrandose siempre a las persecuciones historicas y el holocausto...posiblemente wagner tambien descubrió el mismo mal de los judios al igual que hitler..y tantos y tantos otros en la historia de la humanidad. |
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Saludos, Vargr: Solamente estoy de acuerdo contigo en que la historia la escriben los vencedores y en que el tema del nazismo ha sido manipulado por ellos. Lo que no significa, en absoluto, que este haya sido uno de los regímenes políticos más nefastos de la historia, con sus millones de muertos, holocausto incluido. Los aliados no fueron, tampoco, unos santitos. Las llamadas ?democracias occidentales? tenían sus imperios coloniales donde tiranizaban y explotaban a millones de seres humanos. El régimen de Stalin fue tan condenable como el de Hitler. Mira por dónde, ambos dictadores sanguinarios llegaron a firmar tratados. Los bombardeos de población civil por la aviación aliada y la destrucción de ciudades alemanas sin interés militar constituyeron verdaderos crímenes de guerra que no tuvieron sus juicios de Nuremberg. Y no digamos el exterminio de millones de personas en Japón para probar las bombas atómicas americanas. Un genocidio que nunca se olvidará en Hiroshima y Nagashaki. Esta gente mintió, como miente ahora en la guerra de Iraq. No son unos angelitos. La diferencia está en que mientras en las democracias, con sus defectos y fallos, todo termina sabiéndose y es el pueblo el que tiene la última palabra ?si los poderes fácticos le dejan ? en los regímenes totalitarios el primer crimen es el asesinato de la verdad. Sobre la santidad o maldad de los judíos, he de decir que me parece una insensatez aplicar un mismo cliché a todo un pueblo. Es absurdo decir: los españoles son tal cosa; los negros, tal otra, etc. Las generalizaciones, y más en estos casos, son siempre falsas. En cualquier colectivo hay gente de todas las clases: buenas y malas, trabajadoras y perezosas, honradas y deshonestas. No se puede decir los judíos son... porque los hay de muchas clases. ¿Te parece lo mismo el pacifista y tolerante de Barenboim que el carnicero de Sharon? Cuando dices ?será por algo? refiriéndote a las persecuciones que ha sufrido el pueblo judío a lo largo de la historia, me parece que eres injusto. Es imposible que todo un pueblo sea culpable de algo. Es como si me dijeras que cuando Milosevic decretó la limpieza étnica de croatas, bosnios, albaneses, etc. ?sería por algo?, como si los inocentes asesinados tuvieran la culpa de no ser serbios. Personalmente, he de decirte que admiro al pueblo judío, porque ha sido capaz de sobrevivir a pesar de las injustas persecuciones de que siempre ha sido objeto. Siempre estoy al lado de los perseguidos y de los oprimidos, y no comulgo con los perseguidores y los opresores. Con lo que no estoy de acuerdo es con su religión, que les hace creer que son el pueblo elegido por Dios y sentirse superiores al resto de la humanidad. Ahora bien, lo que condeno sin paliativos es el sionismo, ya que ha convertido a Israel en un estado terrorista que practica la limpieza étnica y el asesinato político. Es una vergüenza que USA y gran parte de los estados democráticos occidentales permitan tal estado de cosas. El holocausto del siglo XXI es el que se está produciendo con los palestinos. En este sentido sionistas y nazis no son tan diferentes. Un saludo y viva la verdad. Rex. |