Is Wagner the Spiritual Father of Israel?

What you are about to read is without doubt the most controversial idea ever presented on this blog. I therefore need to take you carefully through the source material, since, no matter how well the case is presented, I am aware that the standard knee jerk reaction is going to be "that's nonsense because the Nazi interpretation of Wagner is the only Eternal Truth — all that deviates from this is blasphemy". Let the blasphemy begin.

We saw in the last post how Theodor Herzl, father of Zionism, made a gradual ideological move from assimilation to Zionism.

Theodor Herzl

Jaques Kornberg tell us:

In making the German heritage his own, Herzl also absorbed its view of Jewry. The starting point of these notions was the belief that Jews were beset with vices and deficiencies that could only be eliminated through their integration into Christian society. Such theories, seeking the improvement of the Jews, offered a diagnosis of Jewish pathology and a cure. The image of the Jew and the theme of Jewish improvement developed in these theories were to resonate in all of Herzl's writings, pre- and post-Zionist. Herzl was ambivalent toward his Jewishness and sought Jewish improvement through assimilation. The basis for his ambivalence lay in the German program of Jewish emancipation and assimilation.

Accordingly, Dohm ascribed Jewish deterioration to their exclusion from citizenship and concluded that only full citizenship in the modern state would normalize Jews. . . . Jews had once been virtuous peasants and warriors in a thriving state; they could be so again. . . . The cure for Jewish decay was full citizenship in the state, but in a state of their own. 

Quoted from: Theodor Herzl, from assimilation to Zionism by Jacques Kornberg, Indiana Press, 1993.

We saw how these ideas about Jewish decay through centuries of mistreatment can be found both in the writings of Herzl as well as in Wagner. In fact, Wagner goes so far as to write of this mistreatment of the Jews through history as:

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 [Gewalthaber] towards the Sons of Israel

From Jews in Music. Note that the Gewalt in Gewalthaber literally means violence, to emphasise the menacing abuse of power.

Although Jews in Music ends with a call for assimilation of the Jews ("we will be united and without difference"):

so sind wir einig und ununterschieden!
thus we will be united and without difference!
Scan from the original 1869 publication

"Assimilation"
The commentary closing the 1869 version makes it unconditionally clear that Wagner is calling for assimilation

 However, at the start of the essay Wagner says this:

In der reinen Politik sind wir mit den Juden nie in wirklichen Konflikt geraten; wir gönnten ihnen selbst die Errichtung eines jerusalemischen Reiches, und hatten in dieser Beziehung eher zu bedauern, daß Herr v. Rothschild zu geistreich war um sich zum König der Juden zu machen, wogegen er bekanntlich es vorzog: "der Jude der Könige" zu bleiben. 

In pure politics we never come into real conflict with the Jews; we do not even begrudge them the establishment of a Jerusalemic realm [eines jerusalemischen Reiches], and have even more reason to regret in this regard, that Herr von Rothschild was too ingenious to make himself King of the Jews, whereas, as is well known, he preferred to remain "the Jew to the Kings". 

Richard Wagner, Jews in Music (das Judentum in der Musik), 1850 

the words jerusalemischen Reiches as they appeared in the original 1869 publication

The Rothschilds are a Jewish-German family that established European banking and financial houses in the 18th century. Wagner makes the suggestion that if the capitalist Rothschild had an ounce of decency in him, he would have used his power and influence to help with the erection of a "Jerusalemic realm". Invariably, Wagner — ever the anti-capitalist — takes a swipe at them and dismisses von Rothschild as having failed to use his wealth for a nobler cause, instead preferring to remain obsequiously at the beck and call of powerful monarchs as "the Jew to the Kings". That is, Wagner is suggesting that the Rothschilds remained selfish capitalists, too busy getting rich to care about social causes of any merit. The implication here is that centuries of mistreatment through "predatory bestiality" had caused Jews to fall into a degenerate condition: one that could be rectified by the formation of their own independent state. 

In essence, the position taken by both Wagner and Herzl are the same. The only thing is that Wagner published Jews in Music as early as 1850: a year or so after his participation in the liberal Dresden uprisings. Wagner was in exile in Zurich at the time with a death sentence hanging over his head. His friends Roeckel and Bakunin were in prison condemned to death.

Theodor Herzl is regarded as the father of Zionism, and his seminal work der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) was published in 1896. Herzl was also a passionate Wagnerian, and he even went so far as to say that it was Wagner's music that inspired him with the courage to write his book. 

I worked on it [The Jewish State] every day to the point of utter exhaustion. My only recreation was listening to Wagner's music in the evening, particularly to Tannhäuser, an opera which I attended as often as it was produced, only on the evenings when there was no opera did I have any doubts as to the truth of my ideas.

Quoted from: Theodor Herzl, from assimilation to Zionism by Jacques Kornberg, Indiana Press, 1993.

It is more than likely that Herlz would have been familiar with Wagner's Jews in Music. The ideas about the degenerate condition of the Jews found in that article would have been neither shocking nor unfamiliar to him. Indeed, he agreed with them, and used them to justify the need to erect on independent Jewish state. Herlz would have almost certainly agreed with Wagner's own dismissal of those critics who misused Wagner's essay to support anti-Semitic. Wagner himself strongly condemned the misuse of his essay in support of a "shameful Medieval hatred of Jews":

Gröbliche Anfälle, und schimpfende Abwehr der dem Verfasser des Aufsatzes untergelegten, für unsre aufgeklärten Zeiten so schmachvollen, mittelalterlichen Judenhaß-Tendenz, waren das Einzige, was neben absurden Verdrehungen und Fälschungen des Gesagten zum Vorschein kam. 

Crude attacks and abusive defence that undermined the editor of the essay, along with  Medieval anti-Semitic [Judenhaß] tendencies, so shameful in our Enlightened age, were all that came to light, next to absurd distortions and falsifications. 

From Wagner's commentary to Jews in Music addressed to Marie Muchanoff published in Leipzig, 1869.

mittelalterlichen Judenhass-Tendenz
Wagner condemned attempts to read "a Medieval tendency towards the hatred of Jews" into his essay as a purely malicious distortion
Scan from the original 1869 publications

That is an interpretation of Jews in Music that Herlz himself would have almost certainly agreed with.

The only thing is that Herzl's der Judenstaat appeared in 1896, some half century after das Judentum in der Musik. Given Herzl's well know passion for Wagner's music, the question must simply asked if Herlz may have gotten the idea of a Jewish state off Wagner. There is one thing that strongly suggests this as a possibility, and that is that der Judenstaat started its life as an Address to the Rothschilds:

After his experiences in England, Herzl resolved to present his plan to the public at large. The Address to the Rothschilds which was the first complete writing of his plan, forged in the heat of inspiration was thoroughly reworked and emerged as his great book Der Judenstaat. Its title was: The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Problem. . . The "Jewish State" was published in an edition of three thousand. . . . But the general German press, especially the Jewish-controlled press, took a negative attitude. A number of journalists alluded to the adventurer who would like to become Prime Minister or King of the Jews. 

From a biography of Theodor Herzl by Alex Bein published in the English translation of der Judenstaat (Dover Edition, 1988 reprint of a 1946 translation by the American Zionist Emergency Council, New York.)

So Herzl's der Judenstaat, based on the idea of erecting "ein jerusalemisches Reich" (to use Wagner's words) first took shape as an appeal to the Rothschild's to help form this independent Jewish state: exactly as Richard Wagner suggests in his Jews in Music. This raises the strong possibility that Herzl got the idea of Zionism off Wagner, his musical hero. It certainly explains why Herlz was such a passionate Wagnerian, who would never miss an opportunity to listen to Tannhäuser so as to gain inspiration to complete his book.

Herzl even likened the epic task of creating the new Zionist homeland in Palestine to the grandeur of a Wagnerian opera:

The exodus under Moses bears the same relation to this project [in Palestine] as a Shrovetide play by Hans Sachs to a Wagnerian opera. 

Quoted from: Theodor Herzl, from assimilation to Zionism by Jacques Kornberg, Indiana Press, 1993 

I realise this is going to be controversial. Yet the conclusion is extremely hard to avoid, and if Herlz were alive today, I suspect he would support attempts to make nonsense of Nazified distortions of his favourite composer's work. If it is right, that Wagner inspired Zionism, then it would truly make the ban on Wagner's music in Israel an enormous historical tragedy and injustice born of the monstrous misappropriate of his music for evil propaganda purposes. One day, I hope the truth will come out, and when it does, there is no doubt that if a complete opera by Wagner is ever performed in Israel, it simply must be Tannhäuser. It would do Herzl's memory proud.