Wagner and Gobineau

One of the most intelligent and interesting writings on the subjection of the relationship between the Dritte Reich (Third Empire) and Richard Wagner is Saul Friedländer. However, he is a historian specialising in the Holocaust and has no musicology background. As a result you find he has not always had the chance to do enough research to weed out texturally unfounded statements such as the following:

Wagner himself embraced the theoretical racism of the French essayist Arthur de Gobineau 

Nazi Germany and the Jews (Vol 1): The Years of Persecution

In the academic world, when one makes sweeping statements such as this, it is expected that it be backed up with a bibliographic citation. Astonishing nothing of the sort accompanies it. It is appears like a lightning bolt out of the blue, like a religious revelation that is to be accepted as holy writ. In general, a renown expert of the caliber of Professor Friedländer is predictably excellent when it comes to debunking myths about Wagner, but here even he succumbs to hearsay and rumour rather than doing his own original research on this subject.

Gobineau was a commoner but self-styled "Count", a title of his own fancy. He is notorious for his idea that interracial mixing would result in corruption of the blood and racial degeneration—a subject that was a virtual obsession of his. It was an obsession that would later be taken up by the National Socialists.

Arthur de Gobineau: the notorious author of racist ideas that later influenced the National Socialist movement

I found the following essay by Éric Eugène on its translator's website. It is highly recommended reading (in English translation) that presents a scholarly exploration of stereotypical presumptions frequently made to the effect that Richard Wagner openly embraced the proto-Nazi ideology of Gobineau:

http://www.guschlbauer.com/Texte/GE5.PDF

In it Cosima is quoted as describing an incident where Wagner "literally exploded in favour of Christianity as opposed to the racial theories."

Yes, that's right, Wagner EXPLODED IN OPPOSITION to Gobineau's racial theories, which he denounced as "eine schlechthin unmoralische Weltordnung" (totally immoral world-order).

German readers should also read this:

http://guschlbauer.com/Texte/W%26G.pdf

I would make one point about the most important passage in Heldentum und Christentum, Wagner's response to Gobineau:

Das Blut des Heilandes, von seinem Haupte, aus seinen Wunden am Kreuze fließend, — wer wollte frevelnd fragen, ob es der weißen, oder welcher Rasse sonst angehörte?

This has previously been translated by William Aston Ellis as:

The blood of the Saviour, the issue from his head, his wounds upon the cross,—who impiously would ask its race, if white or other?

The word "frevelnd" is much stronger than "impious", which is not a translation any dictionary comes up with. If you look up Leo (the best online German dictionary) you find this:

frevelnd = committing an outrage

The words "frevelnd fragen" literally mean "committing an outrage in asking" but it is better English to write "who would commit such an outrageous as to ask".  The last word "angehörte" means "might belong".

So my translation goes:

The blood of the Saviour flowing from his head, from his wounds on the cross — who would commit such an outrage as to ask whether it might belong to the white or any other race?

In effect, he is outright condemning Gobineau's racist views as an outrage. The substitution of the term "impious" for "outrageous" seems to be a deliberate misrepresentation to the point of malicious censorship of Wagner's words. If you don't believe me, run the sentences, or individual words, through Google translator.

The next sentence after this only confirms this reading:

Wenn wir es göttlich nennen, so dürfte seiner Quelle ahnungsvoll einzig in dem, was wir als die Einheit der menschlichen Gattung ausmachend bezeichneten, zu nahen sein, nämlich in der Fähigkeit zu bewusstem Leiden.

Here is a standard English translation by William Aston Ellis:

Divine we call it, and its source might dimly be approached in what we termed the human species' bond of union, its aptitude for Conscious Suffering.

Notice the expression "might dimly be approached". There is nothing in the original even remotely resembling the word "dimly", a terrible translation of ahnungsvoll. This is a better translation:

If we call it divine, the font of which may only be approached full of foreboding [ahnungsvoll], in what we referred to as that which sums up the unity of the human species—namely the capacity for conscious suffering.

Far from "dimly" approaching things, Wagner writes "ausmachend bezeichneten". The word "ausmachen" means a number of things "to constitute", "to represent" or "to sum up". There is nothing "dim" about it—save perhaps the wit of the translator. It sounds again as though someone is trying to deliberately undermine the emphasis Wagner places on the unity or oneness (Einheit) of humanity, by inserting words that make him sound wishy washier and less committed to this than he is.

This really goes to show how infiltrated with Chamberlain types the English language literature on Wagner is. These gross misrepresentations must be systematically weeded out of the standard literature for being the evils that they are.