Richard and Adolf: Did Richard Wagner Incite Adolf Hitler to Commit the Holocaust?
It is a rather cheap and under the belt tactic to write a dual biography intertwining whoever you hate's biographical details with those of Hitler's, paralleling coincidences in their lives. You could do this with any figure you choose — you could do it to a politician of your choice (eg Bush or Obama), or perhaps even to the author of this book eg "Christopher and Adolf". Expect, however, to be sued. Such an attempt at trying to establish guilt by association, would today almost certainly severely backlash against the author who wrote the dual biography. This book should be no exception.
If you read a respected historian such as Sir Ian Kershaw, he is quite frank about the existence of a large populist Hitler literature of most of it peddling salacious material of dubious value (see Hitler, the Germans and the Final Solution). Nicholson predictably relies on some of these dubious populist books such as Spear of Destiny by Trevor Ravenscroft. Ravenscroft's book has been dismissed by David Luhrssen as "pulp fiction in the guise of history" and lumped together with other lurid "occult Reich" literature offering perversely titillating "pseudo-histories". When Christopher Nicholson uses Ravenscrofts book to invent a link between the Spear of Longinus and Parsifal without ever once presenting evidence of substance to establish a link, he sinks to the same level of "pulp fiction in the guise of history". Indeed that is a perfect summary of Nicholson's own book.
 |
| Christopher Nicholson relies almost completely on Ravenscroft's "pulp fiction in the guise of history", especially his Spear of Destiny, for his information on the Spear of Longinus. Both the text and accompanying picture come from P3 of Nicholson's book. |
The whole book is littered with factual errors from the word go along with sweeping unsubstantiated claims. For example:
P34 .... the most fervent Wagnerian of all time - Adolf HitlerHow bizarre! Did Nicholson measure this and conclude on his ferventometer that Hitler measured higher than any other measured rival including Theodor Herzl? Ironically, Herzl favourite work by Wagner, Tannhäuser, features on the cover of the book. Nicholson seems not to know that in his final days at his Berlin bunker, Hitler listened only to Franz Lehár, and that Wagner was not played at all. That alone should make Herzl measure higher on the ferventometer scale. It is highly likely that it was Lehár, and not Wagner, who was Hitler's true favourite. Nor did Hitler ever called himself The Perfect Wagnerite like George Bernard Shaw, who makes an excellent case for Wagner belonging on the completely wrong — socialist — side of politics to Hitler. Hitler hated the socialist side of politics and exterminated many of his left wing SPD and KPD enemies in the concentration camps alongside Jews.
On p38 Nicholson claims that the colours of the Nazi flag come from the colours of the Flying Dutchman's black and red flag. That's totally ridiculous as red and black are also found on the colours of the modern German and Weimar Republican flags:
More exactly, the Nazi flag is red-black-white: the colours of the Imperial German flag, set up to rival the red-black-gold of their hated Weimar Republic flag. At the time of the 1848-49 Revolution, in which Wagner participated, the red-black-gold unity flag had been strictly banned as a revolutionary symbol (P35 1848: Year of Revolution by Mike Rapport*). On no account did the Nazis adopt a Dutch nautical flag from a ship belonging to a possibly Jewish captain in some opera based on a concept taken from the Jewish poet, Heinrich Heine! Serious historians must be splitting their sides with laughter at this sort of carry on.
P52: Wagner never made friends amongst his peers either as musicians or writers.
Wrong. He had a extremely close friendship with, amongst others, the liberal dissident writer and musician August Roeckel, the Jewish conductor Hermann Levi, as well as Franz Liszt.
P388: the Jewish composer Stravinsky described Bayreuth as "lugubrious."
Actually, Stravinsky wasn't Jewish and went to elaborate lengths to show the Nazis that he was of Polish aristocratic descent, while making the pronouncement that: "I loathe all communism, Marxism, the execrable Soviet monster, and also all liberalism, democratism, atheism, etc." In fact, Stravinsky was also a vehement anti-Semite. The end result was that he was rehabilitated in the eyes of the Nazis.
On P154 Nicholson writes that: Eugen Karl Dühring (1833-1921), an anti-Semite socialist thinker, was given a "leadership role in the publication of the Bayreuther Blätter in 1879". His source for this information is Marcel Prawy's Richard Wagner. On p366 of Dühring's autobiography, Dühring himself recalls that:
In the summer of 1878, Richard Wagner's Bayreuther Blätter turned to me with the request that that I might work on gaining recognition by the university for this journal. I refused to do so on the short and concise grounds that the audience of the Bayreuth composer would not, for the most part, be sufficiently receptive to my thoroughgoing handling of the matter.
Im Sommer 1878 nämlich wendeten sich die Bayreuther Blätter des Herrn Richard Wagner an mich mit dem Ersuchen, für diese Zeitschrift eine Kennzeichnung der Universitäten zu arbeiten. Ich lehnte dies ab unter der kurzen und bündigen Hinweisung darauf, dass ich das Publicum des bayreuther Komponisten zum grossen Teil für meine durchgreifende Behandlung der Sache für nicht empfänglich genug hielte.
That is, the story about Dühring being offered a leading role in the Bayreuther Blätter is entirely fictional. In fact, I have been unable to find anything written by Dühring in the Bayreuther Blätter. Nor have I been able to find any evidence of him ever having contributed to the journal. In the entire Bayreuther Blätter of 1881, Dühring's name is mentioned only once in passing by another author as being a socialist thinker. In the entire 1883 Bayreuther Blätter, Dühring is again mentioned only once in passing by another writer as taking up a position regarding the role of art in society that is entirely contradictory to that of Wagner's.
Nicholson further fails to mention the fact that, even if we supposed that Eugen Dühring had been offered a "leading role" in the Bayreuther Blätter in 1879, the offending racist publication had not even appear yet. When it did appear in 1881, the Bayreuther Blätter played no part whatsoever in its publication. Cosima Wagner even reports in her diary on the 20th October 1879, that Wagner was "horrified" (erschrickt) to discover that a visitor, Heinrich von Stein, was a "Dühringianer". Most importantly Cosima reports Wagner's reaction to Dühring's anti-Semitic essay on 14th of January, 1881 and that Wagner found it "ersetzlich" – meaning horrible, appalling, or outrageous. The only thing that Wagner seemed to like from Dühring's essay was the statement that "the Germans can be even more vulgar than the Jews" (Cosima diary entry for the 1st February, 1881).
Lastly, Nicholson fails to point out the Dühring was allied with the Social Democrats (SPD) and was read by August Bebel, one of the founders of the SPD that was often involved in armed conflict against Hitler's Nazi party.
Nicholson also writes: "In a strange racist distortion many anti-Semites, including Wagner, ate vegetables alone as a reaction to the Jewish God Jehovah who ate meat." Wrong. Wagner was instrumental in popularising animal rights and vegetarianism amongst liberals, including George Bernard Shaw and Gustav Mahler. Wagner got the idea from Schopenhauer, who in turn got it from Eastern philosophy. However, neither Wagner nor Schopenhauer were strict practicing vegetarians. Schopenhauer writes critically of the entire Judeo-Christian attitude to animals:
Thus, because Christian morality leaves animals out of account ..., they are at once outlawed in philosophical morals; they are mere "things", mere means to any ends whatsoever. They can therefore be used for vivisection, hunting, coursing, bullfights and horse racing, and can be whipped to death as they struggle along with heavy carts of stone. Shame on such a morality that is worthy of pariahs, chandalas and mlechchhas, and that fails to recognise the eternal essence that exists in every living thing, and shines forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see the sun!
So the critique is not specifically levelled against Judaism, as Nicholson claims, but against the whole Judeo-Christian tradition of the Bible. Schopenhauer argued that the Eastern philosophical position found in Buddhism and Hinduism was superior to that of the Judeo-Christian one:
The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.
In Religion and Art (1881) Wagner further directs the criticism at the Christian church:
Vielleicht ist schon die eine Unmöglichkeit, die unausgesetzte Befolgung dieser Verordnung des Erlösers durch vollständige Enthaltung von tierischer Nahrung bei allen Bekennern durchzuführen, als der wesentliche Grund des so frühen Verfalles der christlichen Religion als christliche Kirche anzusehen. Diese Unmöglichkeit anerkennen müssen, heisst aber so viel, als den unaufhaltsamen Verfall des menschlichen Geschlechtes selbst bekennen.
Perhaps it is already an impossibility to carry out this as yet unexplored observance of the decree by the Saviour that all adherents abstain completely from eating animals. Here is the fundamental reason for the very early degeneration of the Christian religion, as you can tell by looking at the Christian church. It should be recognised that failure to recognise this [decree] has meant nothing less that the inexorable degeneration of the human race itself.
It's a simply breathtakingly malevolent and utterly vicious writer who seeks to unequivocally convict someone as guilty of "inciting the Holocaust" just for being concerned about animal suffering and welfare. Nicholson should be ashamed of himself.
Schopenhauer elsewhere takes up the idea that compassion towards animals is something of moral importance:
Since compassion for animals is so intimately associated with goodness of character, it may be confidently asserted that whoever is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.
In many of Wagner's late Bayreuth writings there are strong anti-vivisectionist tirades. Here are examples of this type of thing in the Bayreuth Blätter, 1881:
The scientific worthlessness of vivisection in all its manifestations, 1881
This is also why Parsifal is a fool for killing the swan at the start of that work. In Schopenhauer's view, killing any animal, let alone other human beings, is monstrous and bestial — a view shared by Wagner. Schopenhauer wrote:
I know of no more beautiful prayer than that which the Hindus of old used in closing their public spectacles. It was : 'May all that have life be delivered from suffering!' "
From: On the Basis of MoralityWagner was an early campaigner for animal rights and did much to popularise Schopenhauer's teachings on this subject. For more on the subject click here.
P50 "the German Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa, the reincarnation of Siegfried". Again there is absolutely not a single citation from Wagner that even remotely suggests he had Barbarossa in mind in creating the figure of Siegfried. However, in explaining the meaning of the Ring, Wagner does explain to his Dresden revolutionary friend, Roeckel, that Siegfried noble heroism lies in his indifference to power — even though his Ring could grant him unlimited power, if he should forsake love:
[Siegfried] knows the ring, too, but scorns its power, for he has better things to do; he keeps it only as a symbol of the fact that he — never learned fear. You must admit it: the gods in all their glory must pale before this man!In fact, Bernard Shaw is dead right in calling him "Siegfried Bakunin" — after Wagner's anarchist friend. Siegfried is the anarchist destroyer of the symbols of power that capitalism has over man.
Also frightfully predictable are the deliberate misquotations of Wagner's essay Jews in Music (see previous post on this topic). Of course, the fact that Wagner in this very same essay calls for the formation of an independent state of Israel (ein Jerusalemische Reich) is glossed over, as is Wagner's condemnation of the history of anti-Semitism towards the Jews as one of "predatory bestiality" (räuberische Rohheit). The exact passage goes:
das geschichtliche Elend der Juden und die räuberische Rohheit der christlich-germanischen Gewalthaber den Söhnen Israels
the misery of the Jews through history and the predatory bestiality of the Christian-Germanic power-brokers towards the Sons of IsraelThe Gewalt in Gewalthaber means "violence" rather than "power", which is usually "Macht" in German. So it literally means those who rule by violence over the Sons of Israel.
Wagner's clear empathy for the "tragic history" (tragisches Geschicht) expressed in the essay resulting in the up-rootedness and alienation of the Jews is also ignored. This is not to deny that there is anti-capitalist hostility towards rich Jewish bankers in the essay too, and that this is clearly misguided ("anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools" — often attributed to August Bebel). However, his attitude towards Jews is actually deeply complex and even ambivalent so that the essay ends with a rousing call for Jews and Germans to rise above their differences, "so that we are united and without difference!" (so sind wir einig und ununterschieden!). The destruction of the gulf between Jew and Christian in Europe is something that Wagner sees needing a redemptive process from the tragedy of Jewish history. Nicholson writes:
In the very same passage, Wagner calls this process of salvation "the Redemptive Rebirth of Self-annihilation" (Selbstvernichtung wiedergebärenden Erlösungswerke). Note that he says: self-annihilation. He says it is the pain that both German and Jew alike must mutually go through in order that "we are united and without difference". If this rebirth through a redemptive apocalypse is, indeed, meant to be a genocide, then it would have to mean Wagner is calling for the mutual self-genocide of both Christian and Jew alike. Far from it, for it really expresses Wagner's hope that through long toil and struggle, humanity will one day overcome its painfully deep ethnic divisions to realise its essential oneness. How right he was in saying that these ethnic barriers are extremely difficult to overcome. But little wonder Wagner had many Jewish friends, and why two of his pallbearers at his funeral were Jewish. This is also why figures identified as being Ahasvar like eternal wanderers — Wotan, the Flying Dutchman and Kundry are ultimately noble, and heroic characters who rise up to attain their supreme redemption.[Wagner] evokes the spectre of the Wandering Jew, who has no salvation to expect except the grave. Adapting an ominous tone he urges the Jews, "only one thing can redeem you from the burden of your curse - the redemption of Ahasuerus - going under". That he is urging their destruction is clear from an earlier passage in the article.
Of course, if Wotan is an Ahasvar type of Wanderer, this means nothing less than that since Wotan, chief of the Germanic Gods, is the Eternal Wanderer — he must be Jewish. The chief of the Germanic Gods is Jewish! Of course, this never rates a mention in Nicholson's book. Instead, we get the usual argument that even though Wagner never said the dwarfs are Jewish, they must be since they are ugly. Well, who is the racist here? Nicholson goes on:
The Ring of the Nibelungs posited the racial superiority of the gods (Wotan, Fricka, Thor and Donner) and the Volsung race descended from Wotan's dalliances - over the Jewish stereotypes - the Nibelungs, particularly Alberich and Mime.
If the Wanderer is the Jewish chief of the gods, this hardly makes sense — unless you were to deny that wanderers in Wagner are not Ahasvar type of Jewish figures at all. In fact, Wotan is really the same as Yahweh Elohim (like Wotan, also God of storms and war), vengeful God of the Old Testament, and giver of the Law (see previous post on this topic). Siegfried, the anarchist, shatters the Law and the power of the Gods over man. If Wotan is Jewish, then Siegfried himself must be at least half Jewish too. Thor is meant to be a son of Wotan, ergo Jewish.
Finally predictably misquoted is Wagner response to Gobineau. Wagner is quoted as saying about a passage in Siegfried:
Wagner recognized that he had written operas that conformed with [Gobineau's racist] views. In Cosima's diary entry of October 17,1882, she reported on a performance one evening of the third act of Siegfried played by Herr Rubinstein which pleased her and the great composer. "That is Gobineau music," Richard says as he comes in, "that is race. Where else will you find two such beings looking at each other!
Götterdämmerung ends with a supreme redemptive apocalypse of Ahasver: much like the one at the end of Jews in Music where Wagner says that through the rebirth of apocalypse "we will be united and without difference". Wagner believed in the ultimate redemptive overcoming of the terrible ethnic divisions between all peoples, and even says in "Heroism and Christianity" that one day all the races will becoming intermixed and indistinguishable in one pure humanity. However, he believed that this overcoming of ethnic differences would involve a cataclysmic struggle to realise the oneness of humanity and is not something that you could just achieve by legislated equality alone. In Heroism and Christianity Wagner condemns Gobineau and asks who should commit such an outrage (frevelnd fragen) as to ask whether the blood spilt by Christ was just for the salvation of the white or any other race ("wer wollte frevelnd fragen, ob es der weißen, oder welcher Rasse sonst angehörte?"). Cosima reports Wagner and Gobineau were reduced to a shouting match with the outraged Wagner insisting that a Christian redemption for all humanity could overcome all racial divides.
Likewise we are promised revelatory references in which Wagner heralded the arrival of the Messianic Führer. These references never eventuate, mostly because nothing of the sort exists. As for a much more authoritative discussion of Wagner in Israel, the reader is strongly urged to read The Ring of Myths: The Israelis, Wagner and the Nazis by Na'ama Sheffi, editor of Zmanim (Time), the historical quarterly of Tel Aviv University. If you understand Sheffi, you will also understand why Daniel Barenboim has said that it is important that Wagner be played in Israel "to deny the Nazis one last victory". Sadly, the Nicholsons of the world are fighting tooth and nail to deliver that last victory to the Nazis.
The ultimate problem with this book is that it is too dependent on a wholesale uncritical acceptance of the Nazi propagandist lies about Wagner. It is easy to show that Wagner's thinking was, throughout his life, that of a liberal socialist, who belonged on the opposite side of politics to Hitler. Wagner even wrote to his friend and Jewish theatre director Angelo Neumann saying that "I distance myself completely from the modern "anti-Semitic" movement [of German political parties]. In an upcoming issue of der Bayreuther Blätter, a passage will appear by me that will state in a spirited way how it is impossible for me to associate with that movement..." (my translation from Personal Recollections of Wagner). It is really sad that Nicholson's book wants to place Hitler's perverse distortions of Wagner on a pedestal to be unquestionably worshipped as the Eternal Truth.
Nicholson's book is an example of the worst type of reductionistic Hitlerism. Sir Ian Kershaw describes this style of writing well:
The ‘Hitlerism’ argument will not go away. In fact, there are some signs . . . that the old psycho-historical interpretations are making a comeback, and in equally reductionist fashion. . . . In each case, one or two bits of dubious hearsay evidence are surrounded by much inference, speculation and guesswork to come up with a case for world history shaped fatefully and decisively by Hitler’s ‘dark secret’.
From the chapter Hitler and the Uniqueness of Nazism in Kershaw's Hitler, the Germans and the Final Solution.
Claims to the effect that National Socialism functioned complete around the theories of a nineteenth century opera composer are equally absurdly reductionistic. It is a claim all the more ridiculous when you consider that Hitler's private library is remarkable for the total absence of any of Wagner's prose writings.
In the end, this really leaves one with the creepy unease about whether this book is intended to be some sort of covert Hitler worshipping tribute to the Eternal Truth of Nazi interpretations of art. Nicholson has voraciously set out to deliver the Nazis that "one last victory" that Barenboim has worked so hard to deny them. The author struggles throughout the book to hide a pathologically morbid obsession with all things Nazi and related to Hitler. Rather than undermining the Nazi lies about Wagner, the author ends up becoming their most faithful missionary, hell bent on ensuring that the legacy of Nazis propaganda lives on as gospel, so that Wagner's music can eternally continue to be monstrously abused as a propagandist tribute to them, just as Hitler wanted.
In reality, Bernard Shaw was right all along in his interpretation of Wagner, unclouded by the sort of politicisation of the issue that has taken place after the publication of The Perfect Wagnerite: Wagner, and The Ring in particular, is profoundly influenced by the socialist and democratic ideals that emerged during the Dresden uprising, for which Wagner went into an eleven year exile with a death sentence hanging over his head (see Wagner as I knew him). These ideals were truly the prelude to the 1918 Revolution that created the Weimar Republic and which represented everything that Hitler hated, and sought all his life to exterminate. It is high irony indeed and a testimony to Hitler's incredible stupidity that he never really understood Wagner and the idealistic philosophical richness of his art. It is a stupidity that Nicholson chooses to fervently endorse and perpetuate.
Note:
* During the 1848 Revolution in Berlin, the revolutionaries openly flaunted the ban on the German black-red-gold unity flag, and sympathetic citizens wore hats in unity colours. Revolutionary forces all defiantly flying the unity flag, set up barricades, laying siege to the Prussian Royal Palace. The military counter revolutionary forces charged the civilian barricades, and blood run through the streets of Berlin. See P44-45 1848 Year of Revolution. By Michael Rapport.
Publisher Basic Books, 2009
ISBN 0465014364, 9780465014361
Length 461 pages
No comments:
Post a Comment