Thus Will We be United and Without Difference!

I thought I would revisit the subject of the famous final paragraph of Wagner's das Judentum in der Musik, as this remains contentious and its interpretation hotly contested. If you recall, I have already condemned the appallingly bad English translation by William Ashton Ellis of Wagner's prose works. Michael Tanner too has dismissed Ellis as "bizarre" and agrees with me in saying that many of the misunderstandings about Wagner can be traced back to him. Due to a lack of an acceptable alternative English translation, I have decided to take non-German readers through this final paragraph virtually word by word.

I do encourage English readers to use Google translator to help them decide if any translator bias has been introduced (machines tend to give a more impartial translation). The trouble is that Wagner's old fashioned German academic prose has extremely elaborate and wordy sentence structures. This is characterised by long sentences with subordinate clause inside subordinate clause. Google translator copes with this extremely poorly. Hopefully, I will be able to isolate enough short subclauses that a machine can cope with these better, because if you just throw in an isolated clause or phrase, it does a much more passable job. In this way, the reader is invited to use Google translator to double check my translation for themselves.

I also highly recommend LEO to translate individual words. Where I have focussed on the translation for specific a word, either LEO or Google translator should have no problems in giving a second opinion for a alternative English translation. Once again, the reader is encouraged to check for themselves.

In this way, all readers are strongly encouraged to use these online resources to critically examine  every word of my interpretation and translation. I should also mention that no less an authority than the great Israeli National Socialist era historian, Saul Friedländer, totally agrees with my views about the final paragraph of this essay:

However, on the previous page, in which Wagner call upon the Jews to follow the example of Börne in order to give up for the sake of "the redemption into genuine human beings", he clearly says that the vanishing of their social, cultural, and religious idiosyncrasies will restore them into a universal and redeemed humanity. In this interpretation of redemption there still echoes Wagner's revolutionary ideals of his age. One can interpret Wagner's first anti-Judaic pamphlet not as a call for the annihilation of the Jews, but rather read it as the appeal for the elevation of Judaism as a culture, in order to remove the "Jewish spirit" ... Can the Jews be liberated of their "Jewish spirit" like Börne? To Hitler it must have all seemed ideologically unacceptable.

Saul Friedländer: Hitler und Wagner. My translation from the German. 

Another famous historian who has validated my interpretation is the Hitler biographer, Joachim Fest. However, rather than rely on my word, or that of any "authority", the reader is encouraged to use the guided translation presented here to gain their own understanding of Wagner's words.

For a general discussion and commentary of the overall points made by Wagner in this essay please see my earlier post on his Judaism in Music.

The Final Paragraph

Here is the full final paragraph of interest:

Noch einen Juden haben wir zu nennen, der unter uns als Schriftsteller auftrat. Aus seiner Sonderstellung als Jude trat er Erlösung suchend unter uns: er fand sie nicht, und mußte sich bewußt werden, daß er sie nur mit auch unsrer Erlösung zu wahrhaften Menschen finden können wurde. Gemeinschaftlich mit uns Mensch werden, heißt für den Juden aber zu allernächst so viel als: aufhören, Jude zu sein. Börne hatte dies erfüllt. Aber gerade Börne lehrt auch, wie diese Erlösung nicht in Behagen und gleichgültig kalter Bequemlichkeit erreicht werden kann, sondern daß sie, wie uns, Schweiß, Not, Ängste und Fülle des Leidens und Schmerzes kostet. Nehmt rücksichtslos an diesem durch Selbstvernichtung wiedergebärenden Erlösungswerke teil, so sind wir einig und ununterschieden! Aber bedenkt, daß nur Eines eure Erlösung von dem auf Euch lastenden Fluche sein kann: Die Erlösung Ahasvers, der Untergang!

We still have to name one Jew, who appeared amongst us as a writer. From his special position as a Jew he appeared before us seeking Redemption (Erlösung): he found it not. He was forced to realise that it [Redemption] could be found only if it came along with our own Redemption into genuine human beings. To collaboratively become human with us, means to the Jew nothing less than: stop being Jews. That Börne fulfilled. But straight away Börne also learned how redemption cannot be attained in the indifference of cold comfort, but, just as it does for us, it would cost sweat, distress, fear and be full of pain and suffering. Ruthlessly take part in this redemptive work of self-annihilating rebirth, so that we will be united [einig] and without difference [ununterschieden]! Consider, however, that only one thing can be the Redemption from the curse that burdens you: the Redemption of Ahasver, the Untergang [going under/destruction/apocalypse]

 Ludwig Börne

First, to understand this passage we need to know who Ludwig Börne (1786 – 1837) was.

Karl Ludwig Börne was born Loeb Baruch on May 6, 1786, at Frankfurt am Main, son of Jakob Baruch. Both his grandfather and his father, Jacob Baruch, were engaged in business, and employed as fiscal and purchasing agents for the government. At age fourteen, he studied medicine with Professor Hetzel at Giessen. After a year, he was sent to study medicine at Berlin under a physician, Markus Herz. He studied constitutional law and political science at University of Heidelberg and Giessen. There he received his PhD in 1809 with the dissertation Ueber die Geometrische Vertheilung der Staatsgebiete.

When the Jews of Frankfurt were still relegated to the "Judengasse," the issue presented itself as to what should be done with Börne, as the only Jewish official in the service. They tried to force him to resign, but he refused, so he was dismissed in 1814. Börne's feeling at this time are clearly expressed in his satirical sketch "Jews in the Free City of Frankfort" in "Fragmente und Aphorismen" (Gesammelte Schriften, ed. 1840, vol. III). At the request of the Frankfurt congregation he prepared a monograph entitled Aktenmässige Darstellung des Bürgerrechts der Israeliten in Frankfurt, and two pamphlets, Für die Juden and Die Juden und Ihre Gegner, the latter of which was written at the suggestion of his father, by whom, however, it was suppressed on account of its bitterness.

On June 5, 1818, he went to Rödelheim and was baptised by Pastor Bertuch as a convert to the Lutheran Church and he assumed the name of "Karl Ludwig Börne". It was widely known that he had become estranged from the observance of Judaism.

He began his journalistic career, by contributing a series of short anonymous articles to the "Frankfurter Journal," in which he sought to arouse the Germans against submission to the Napoleonic French invasion, and by this means helped in awakening the old Teutonic spirit.


In 1815, after the downfall of Napoleon, there began a thirty three year long politically reactionary era in Germany. Patriots like Moritz Arndt and Otto Jahn were indicted for high treason. Those who had worked to reorganise Prussia were no longer needed in the service of the state; university students were imprisoned en masse for trivial offenses; all of the writings of Heine were banned.

After the July Revolution (1830), he escape to Parisian exile, expecting to find a society of fellow dissidents who shared his own liberal ideology. Although to some extent disappointed in his hopes, he continued his hars criticism of the political condition of Germany.


In his Letters from Paris, he laid bare with unsparing skill the endless stupidities and tyrannies of the governing classes in the German Fatherland so dear to him, and revelled in the delights of the freedom to be enjoyed in France. The ideals that he strived for were a united Germany, freed from the bonds and shackles of medieval kingships, princeships, and lordships, living in close bonds of amity with France. He advocated armed revolution to secure the liberty of his Fatherland.


The reactionary era continued in Germany until 1848, years after after Börne's death in 1837. The more liberal "Young Germany" was born of the fruit of the toils of idealist thinkers such as Börne and Heine.

With this you can see how an idealistic Börne contributed to the foundation of the more liberal Young Germany, and how he patriotically roused Germany up in revolt against Napoleonic rule. These are clearly the reasons why Wagner admired him as a fellow liberal minded patriot and man of letters.

With that, we will go through the final paragraph of Judaism in Music (das Judentum in der Musik) by Richard Wagner, dealing specifically with Börne.

Sentence One

 Noch einen Juden haben wir zu nennen, der unter uns als Schriftsteller auftrat

We still have to name one Jew, who appeared amongst us as a writer.

This one is easy.

nennen = to name
haben wir zu nennen = literally "have we to name"
auftrat third person past perfect from auftreten = to appear
Schriftsteller = writer
unter uns = literally "under us" but means "amongst us" — see LEO for multiple different translations of "unter"

Sentence Two

Aus seiner Sonderstellung als Jude trat er Erlösung suchend unter uns: er fand sie nicht, und mußte sich bewußt werden, daß er sie nur mit auch unsrer Erlösung zu wahrhaften Menschen finden können wurde. 

From his special position [Sonderstellung] as a Jew he appeared before us seeking Redemption [Erlösung]: he found it not. He was forced to realise that it [Redemption] could be found only if it came along with our own Redemption into genuine [wahrhaften] human beings [Menschen]. 

Here we go — convoluted and wordy sentences. I tend to follow translators like Macquarrie-Robinson, who take these old fashioned German sentences and break them into a series of shorter sentences.  My argument is that English grammar does not take well to these extremely long sentences. I remember being told by my Latin teacher to translate Latin to English like this too — classical Roman writers love extremely long sentences, but, like German grammar, Latin can sustain this. Not so English.

Part One

Aus seiner Sonderstellung als Jude trat er Erlösung suchend unter uns 

From his unique position [Sonderstellung] as a Jew he appeared before us seeking Redemption [Erlösung]

Sonderstellung literally means "exceptional position". It is a compound word of sonder + stellung. The word "sonder" can also means "special". However, "sonderlich" can also mean "peculiar", "strange" or "particular".
Stellung = position

trat is the third person past perfect tense from treten (literally to step or tread).

Erlösung = salvation, redemption
suchen = to search, to seek
suchend = seeking, searching
Erlösung suchend = "redemption seeking", "seeking redemption"

Part Two 

er fand sie nicht 

he found it not. 

fand third person past perfect from finden = to find
sie = it (feminine form, literally she, referring to the feminine noun Erlösung)
er fand sie nicht = he found it [redemption] not

Part Three 

und er mußte sich bewußt werden 

[He] was forced to realise 

er mußte = third person past perfect from müssen = to have to, to be obliged to, to be bound to
sich = reflexive "oneself/himself"
sich bewußt werden = become aware, become conscious of

Part Four

... daß er sie nur mit auch unsrer Erlösung zu wahrhaften Menschen finden können wurde. 

... that it [Redemption] could be found only if it came along with our own Redemption into a genuine humanity.

daß = that
sie = it (feminine form referring to the feminine noun Erlösung)

First difficulty: nur mit auch unsrer. Literally "only with also our" or "only with also of our/ours". I have chosen "along with our own". The words "nur" and "auch" function as intensifiers (like "doch" or "indeed").

zu = to
Erlösung zu = redemption to or into
wahrhaften = truthful, true, real, veritable
Menschen  = human beings
wahrhaften Menschen = genuine human beings

It means that along with the Jews, so too "did we [Christian-Germans] also have to find our own redemption". That redemption is also a redemption to something else ie a transformation into something else — ie into "wahrhaften Menschen".

"Wahrhaften Menschen": this means that Christian-Germans had to find their own redemptive transformation into "authentic human beings". That is, Christian-Germans had to transform into decent human beings as well.

Second difficulty: finden können wurde. Too many words here, literally "would be able to find". That is Börne would only be able to find redemption if Christian-Germans also transformed themselves into decent human beings as well.

The implication is that Christian-Germans have not traditionally behaved towards Jews as decent human beings. In fact, Wagner talks earlier in the same essay of:

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 [räuberische Rohheit] of the Christian-Germanic power-brokers [Gewalthaber] towards the Sons of Israel

That is to say, that Christian-Germans also had to redeem themselves from the barbarism of their past behaviour towards the Jews. That is the Redemption (Erlösung) that Christian-Germans had to find for themselves.

Sentence Three

Gemeinschaftlich mit uns Mensch werden

To collaboratively [gemeinschaftlich] become human with us

Gemeinschaftlich = collaboratively, communally, jointly, commonly, in concert, united
mit uns = with us
Mensch = human, human being, person
werden = to become
Mensch werden = to become human

Gemeinschaftlich mit uns Mensch werden = collaboratively/jointly becoming human beings with us.

werden alternatively could be the imperative form (ie a command eg stand up!) ie become! That is: Become human beings with us communally/collaboratively!

In other words, this transformative process of becoming genuinely human was collaborative work, and something that affected both sides of the dialectical equation (ie both German and Jew alike). The idea is that both sides had been dehumanised by the historical relationship between oppressor and oppressed. The oppressor had been reduced to little more than a predatory beast. It was generally accepted, including by Jews such as Theodor Herzl, that Jews had also become "degenerate" by an oppression, which had restricted Jews to jobs such as moneylending (usury). So both sides needed to regain their lost humanity.

It is like Marx's dialectical transformation of ruling and working classes (thesis and antithesis). However, in the case of a tension between two side of an ethnic conflict, both sides must be willing to embrace fundamental redemptive transformation. Both German and Jew had to be willing to take part in the re-humanising transformation.

Gemeinschaftlich mit uns Mensch werden, heißt für den Juden aber zu allernächst so viel als: aufhören, Jude zu sein. 

To collaboratively become human with us, means first and foremost: stop being Jews (aufhören, Jude zu sein). 

heißen = to mean something
allernächst = very next, most immediately
zu = too, far too much
zu  allernächst  = figurative translation: "first and foremost"
aufhören = to stop

It is sometimes argued that Wagner meant that Jews should integrate by converting like Börne to Christianity. However, it could also be interpreted from a Feuerbachian perspective as meaning that in a newly transformed socialist society both sides should give up religion and collectively embrace humanism. This was exactly the reason why a lot of Jews became socialists eg Rosa Luxemburg, as it gave them a better chance of finding integration in a modernised society. Notice however that Wagner does NOT say: "die damned Jew." That is not a permissible translation of the text.

Sentence Four

Börne hatte dies erfüllt. 

That Börne fulfilled.

erfüllen = to fulfill

Another easy sentence — Börne did indeed stop being a Jew by converting to Lutheranism, at which point he changed his name from Leob Baruch to Ludwig Börne.

Sentence Five

Aber gerade Börne lehrt auch, wie diese Erlösung nicht in Behagen und gleichgültig kalter Bequemlichkeit erreicht werden kann, sondern daß sie, wie uns, Schweiß, Not, Ängste und Fülle des Leidens und Schmerzes kostet.

But right then Börne also learned how redemption cannot be attained in the indifference of cold comfort , but, just as it does for us, it would cost sweat, distress, fear and be full of pain and suffering.

Another tangled sentence.

Part One

Aber gerade Börne lehrt auch,

gerade = straight away

wie diese Erlösung nicht in Behagen und gleichgültig kalter Bequemlichkeit erreicht werden kann

wie = how
Behagen = pleasure, ease, contentment, sense of well-being
gleichgültig = indifferent, apathetic
kalter = genitive of kalt (cold) ie "of cold"
Bequemlichkeit = comfort, snugness
gleichgültig kalter Bequemlichkeit = indifference of cold comfort

Part Two

sondern daß sie, wie uns, Schweiß, Not, Ängste und Fülle des Leidens und Schmerzes kostet.

but, just as it does for us, it would cost sweat, distress, fear and be full of pain and suffering.

sondern = but, but rather
daß sie = that it (it here has to refer to redemption)
wie uns = like for us, just as to/for us
kostet (from kosten) = cost

Sentence Six

Nehmt rücksichtslos an diesem durch Selbstvernichtung wiedergebärenden Erlösungswerke teil, so sind wir einig und ununterschieden!

Ruthlessly take part in this redemptive work of self-annihilating rebirth, so that we will be united and without difference!

Nehmt ... teil = separable verb from teilnehmen = to take part
rücksichtslos (adj) = cavalier, ruthless, reckless, hard-nosed, indiscriminate (being used here as an adverb eg recklessly, ruthlessly, indiscriminately)

Selbt- = self- as in self-service 
Vernichtung = annihilation, destruction, demolition, obliteration, extermination
Selbstvernichtung = selbst + vernichtung = self-annihilation

Note particularly that Wagner writes self-annihilation. In German, self-service is Selbstbedienung (Selbst + Bedienung). If you went to a restaurant that said Selbstbedienung, you would go hungry if you waited for service. Likewise, Selbstvernichtung can only be happen if the participant is willing to partake in it themselves out of their own volition. LEO gives us another a figurative option for the translation of Vernichtung as evisceration, but once again this would have to mean self-evisceration like harakiri.

wieder = again
gebärenden = giving birth (from gebären = to give birth)
wiedergebärenden = giving birth again = regenerating, becoming reborn

Erlösungs = redemption's (from Erlösung)
Werke = plural of Werk (work)
Erlösungswerke = redemptions work(s), work(s) of redemption, work(s) of redemption

Selbstvernichtung wiedergebärenden Erlösungswerke = literally "self-annihilation of rebirthing/regenerating work of redemption", less literal options include "self-annihilating task of regenerative redemption". Feel free to come up with your own version.

Obviously "ruthlessly exterminate those damned Jews" is not an option here, except as a bad joke. The term wiedergebärenden makes it clear that this self-annihilation is a regenerative process, a redemptive rebirth. It is absolutely and unequivocally clear that this simply cannot in any way, shape or form, be interpreted as a call for one of the two sides to annihilate the other side.

so = so, that way, thus, so that, such, thusly,
sind wir = wir sind = we are or we will be (present tense is usually used to indicate future tense in German except where emphasis is required. This why German speakers, when speaking English, make the mistake of saying "tomorrow I go into the city", because if you say "morgen werde ich in die Stadt gehen" it means "tomorrow I really will be going into the city")
einig = united

unterscheiden = to differ, discriminate, distinguish, to be different
unterschieden = distinguished, discriminated, to be different from
un- = not, un- eg un-readable
ununterschieden = nicht unterschieden = from unterscheiden = without difference, indistinguishable, undiscriminated (from one another)

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

Wagner is calling on Jews and Christian to overcome their differences and become united in a Gemeinschaft without discrimination. Wagner makes it clear that a self-annihilating rebirth on both sides must take place if this redemptive union were to occur. If, instead of being a self-annihilating rebirth of both parties, Wagner meant an annihilation of one party by the other, there could be no way the two parties could become "united (einig) and without difference (ununterschieden)", and this sentence would not make sense.

Sentence Seven

Aber bedenkt, daß nur Eines eure Erlösung von dem auf Euch lastenden Fluche sein kann: Die Erlösung Ahasvers, der Untergang! 

Consider, however, that only one thing can be the Redemption from the curse that burdens you: the Redemption of Ahasver, the Untergang!

Aber = but, however

bedenken = to consider, bear something in mind

Eines = one thing

lasten = burden

lastend = burdening 

Fluch = curse

untergehen = to go under

Untergang = doom, downfall, decline, apocalypse, going under

Untergang in Wagnerian usage: apocalypse, revelation, ultimate fulfilment, apotheosis. Examples:

in der Kunst unterzugehen; aber ein solcher Untergang ist nur ihre Verherrlichung 

to "go under" [unterzugehen] through art – however, such an Untergang is only its apotheosis.

The use of the phrase Untergang in sentence seven is in the figurative Wagnerian use. It means an apocalyptic apotheosis or fulfilment. This has religious undertones, related to αποκαλυπτειν: to reveal. In the Jewish tradition this means the revelation of a secret from God. 

The use of the word Untergang in sentence seven is about voluntarily participating in the "Selbstvernichtung wiedergebärenden Erlösungswerke" of sentence six. That means the "destruction" (Untergang) is a self-imposed self-annihilation (Selbstvernichtung).  It means that the "destruction" leads to being reborn (wiedergebärenden). Finally, the Untergang is meant to be a redemption (Erlösungswerke): a beautiful grace that is granted. Being brutally murdered is scarcely a redemption, nor a voluntary participation, nor does it lead to rebirth.

The most important meaning of this Untergang is as a redemption from being eternally homeless. The two solutions to this deep seated feeling of homelessness given in the entire essay include the formation of a Zionist homeland — "ein jerusalemisches Reich". Alternatively he gives the as the other solution, the rebirth through self-destructive Untergang of the Jewish identify through its assimilation into the gentile world. In the 1869 version of das Judentum in der Musik he add a commentary that clearly explains this so as to remove all doubt:

If, by comparison, this element is assimilated [assimiliert] in this manner, so that  together in community [gemeinschaftlich] with us, it helps to mature the development of a loftier humane [menschlichen] establishment, the most candid disclosure of the difficulties of assimilation [Assimilation] is surely more desirable rather than its concealment. 

Soll dagegen dieses Element uns in der Weise assimiliert werden, daß es mit uns gemeinschaftlich der höheren Ausbildung unsrer edleren menschlichen Anlagen zureife, so ist es ersichtlich, daß nicht die Verdeckung der Schwierigkeiten dieser Assimilation, sondern nur die offenste Aufdeckung derselben hierzu förderlich sein kann.

The German spelling has been modernised as is standard publication practice ie assimliert not assimilirt.

This leaves absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Wagner intended his essay to be understood as a call for assimilation. In the German text, he even uses the word Assimilation and however much the Nazi apologist may be enraged, there is not the faintest hint of ambiguity here.

Since I doubt that anyone is going to believe me, I thought I would give the reader a look at a image capture of the Urtext (using old German spelling) of this very passage as it appeared in the 1869 publication:

As old German script is hard to read, I have underlined the word Assimilation in red. In case, you are still blind to it, here is the word Assimilation again, enlarged to eliminate all doubt:

"Assimilation"
Image from original 1869 priting

Examples of this type of Untergang and redemption granted to characters in Wagner's work include the Flying Dutchman, Wotan, Isolde, and Kundry. These are all noble and heroic characters who rise above their condition to attain supreme fulfilment. Wagner does not "kill" these characters off as wicked scum who deserve to die by execution in a gas chamber. The fact that Shakespeare "kills" Hamlet does not mean that Shakespeare did so with the intent of inciting genocide of the Danes, so why similar such malicious genocidal intent should be read into Wagner's texts is unclear. Wagner refers to Wotan as "my joyfully self-annihilating God" for example in his letter to Roeckel: note once again, it is self-annihilation.

Furthermore, in the previous sentence number five, Wagner makes it clear that the redemptive process is something Christian and Jews alike must both take part in. If you are to insist that the only redemption is genocide, Wagner would have to be inciting the genocide of both German and Jew alike — more exactly self-genocide. 

The other thing about the curse, is that it does not mean "accursed Jews — die the damned lot of you". Rather the curse of Ahasver is that of eternal wandering and homelessness. This is the major theme of Judaism in Music — the painful homelessness, alienation, and uprootedness of the Jewish people. Earlier in the same essay, Wagner writes:

[wir] dürfen eben so die Anklage der christlichen Zivilisation unterlassen, welche den Juden in seiner gewaltsamen Absonderung erhielt, als wir andererseits durch die Berührung der Erfolge dieser Absonderung, die Juden auch keinesweges zu bezichtigen im Sinne haben können. 

[we] ought to refrain from the denunciation of Christian civilisation, which has kept the Jews in their state of violent detachment [gewaltsamen Absonderung ie their profound state of alienation]. On the other hand, on no account do we have any intention of blaming the Jews for the success of this alienation [Absonderung], that we have hereby touched on.

So the curse means this perpetual sense of "violent detachment" that breeds the alienation and homelessness that leads the Jews to become eternal wanderers. Redemption from the curse is about becoming spiritually and emotionally assimilated into the gentile community (Gemeinschaft) to the point that this alienation is destroyed:

Gemeinschaftlich mit uns Mensch werden . . . so sind wir einig und ohne unterschied

Collaboratively become human with us . .  . so that we will be united and without difference.

This is why there is every reason to think that Redemption is a good thing, including the Redemption of Ahasver. If Redemption sounds like a positive grace then it's because it is. "Redemption shall be granted to you", doesn't just mean: die you bastards! However, this is what this last sentence is repeatedly asserted to mean, right down to it meaning that Wagner thought that extermination camps should be set up to kill — "redeme" — Jews en masse.

It has been pointed out that if the Redemption of Ahasvar were applied to all Jews that there would be none left. There is no doubt that this would be true if this were to occur through assimilation of the Jews, in becoming "united and without difference", after they accepted Wagner's imperative to "stop being Jews" ("aufhören, Jude zu sein"). However shocking though we may consider this by modern standards, if we judge this by the standards of the period it was considered perfectly liberal. The complete disappearance of Jews through their total assimilation into gentile society was accepted to be desirable, even amongst liberal Jews like Theodor Herzl. In the original publication of Judaism in Music Wagner even signed himself off anonymously as R. Freigedank  or R. Freethought. As far as Wagner was concerned, he was writing as a radical liberal, who had only recently participated in the Dresden uprising the year before.

Others will insist that Wagner's call for the Jews to disappear be seen in the light of statements earlier in Judaism in Music that gentiles liberate themselves from the oppression of rich Jewish bankers. Again, even Jews like Herzl accepted that Jews had "degenerated" as a result of centuries of oppression by Christians (Wagner even talks of the "predatory bestiality of the Christians towards Jews), and that the stereotypical negative character traits of Jews (such as being money hungry capitalists) had emerged as a result of this. The cure for this "degeneration" was widely regarded to be assimilation, and later on with Herzl, nationhood or Zionism. There is no doubt that Wagner is aggressively calling for the cure of assimilation as a means of undermining the Jewish capitalist bankers, and as far as he is concerned, Herr Freigedank is being radically liberal — even socialist.

It is certainly must be emphasised once again that there is no denying that Wagner is calling for the disappearance of Jews through assimilation. Once again, there is no denying this will strike the modern reader as being monstrous, and even ultra-right wing by modern standards. However, it cannot be stressed enough that this was considered enlightened and liberal by the standards of the time. Jacques Kornberg tells us these ideals were fully shared by Theodor Herzl:

For Herzl, Jewish disfigurement extended to the physical features of Jews. In Freytag’s novel, Veitel Itzig’s pale and puny physique was the physical embodiment of an inner ugliness. Jewishness, for Freytag, carried a physical stigma. Similarly, Herzl observed in the Jensen review that Jews "had a different bodily and mental physiognomy, a strange, even, alas, a despised physiognomy." 'This was because of constraints against intermarriage. For the sake of the "improvement" of the Jewish "Folk-profile,” these constraints would have to disappear. . . . Herzl sought not so much the improvement of the Jews as the disappearance of Jewry.

From Theodor Herzl: from assimilation to Zionist by Jacques Kornberg 

These "liberal" ideals that Herzl believed in passionately before his conversion to the Zionist cause describe the ideology of Wagner's Judaism in Music to a tee.

As for those who still insist that Wagner thought that Redemption can only occur in a gas chamber, they will consider Wagner's Jewish friends to be stupid turkeys who had been suckered into supporting Christmas. I strongly suspect that his many Jewish friends and admirers would have taken strong offence at such suggestions. The real reason he had Jewish friends was that overall his attitude to Jews belonged firmly within the assimilationist camp. That placed him in the liberal, and progressive side of the political spectrum of his era. This is what Hermann Levi, the son of a Rabbi had to say about Judaism in Music in a letter to Cosima Wagner:

I know quite well the content of "Judaism in Music" and share the view of that glorious book.

This is not to deny that such assimilationist ideas would be not be considered at all liberal today, let alone acceptable, but that is like calling Mozart's physicians "incompetent" for failing to perform a kidney transplant. At least Wagner promised Jews a vision of Redemption after centuries of oppression.

The fact that even Theodor Herzl, founder of the Zionist movement, was an ardent lover of Wagner is not surprising, given that Wagner opens his essay Judaism in Music with a call for the founding of a Jewish state — ein jerusalemisches Reich:

wir gönnten ihnen selbst die Errichtung eines jerusalemischen Reiches

we do not even begrudge them the erection of a Jerusalemic realm.

"jerusalemischen Reiches"
"Jerusalemic realm"
Image from original 1869 printing

Herzl’s love of Wagner's Tannhäuser culminated in the 1898 Second Zionist Congress which, according to an account of the event, “opened with the sound of the opera.” Herlz went as far as to say that if were not for Tannhäuser he would never have had the courage to have written The Jewish State:

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 

Indeed, the question needs to be asked whether Herzl got his inspiration for the idea of Zionism from Wagner. If it were the case, it would make Wagner the spiritual father of modern Israel. Herzl even likened the formation of the new Zionist state to a grand undertaking of Wagnerian proportions:

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 

For his love of Wagner, Herlz has been generally dismissed as yet another turkey pining for Christmas, but this needs to be totally reconsidered in light of a serious reading of Wagner, unbiased by later political propaganda during the 1930s. It is sad that National Socialist political propaganda has been allowed to influence Wagner interpretation to such a degree that Herzl's favourite work by Wagner, Tannhäuser, has never been performed in Israel.  The final part of the Herzl quotation about Tannhäuser raising doubts in his mind, should be read to mean that since Wagner generally tended to advocate assimilation ("we will be united and without difference"), that listening to his music may have raised doubts as to whether his change of tact from assimilation to Zionism was the right move. There is also every reason to think that Herzl, who had a law degree from the University of Vienna, was in far better position to correctly understand Wagner's writings (which are even harder reading than Marx or Hegel), than a poorly educated beer-hall bully like Hitler, who had been rejected from art school.

One should also remember that Jews such as Rosa Luxemburg were often attracted to the socialist ideal of ethnic assimilation into the oneness of humanity through the promise of an Untergang of dated and oppressive social attitudes, like that in Götterdämmerung, where the old orders goes up in flames. In this essay, Wagner is clearly expressing hopes of a dialectic historical solution to the ethnic tensions between Christian and Jew, but he would probably have said something similar in our age with respect to ethnic tensions between non-Muslim and Muslim.

Lastly, let nobody speak of a "revisionist" or "apologist" interpretation of Wagner being presented here. What is happening is that Wagner is being allowed to speak for himself, in such a way that Nazi interpretations are consigned to the lunatic asylum where they belong. That means Wagner's words mean what they say, not whatever perverse thing that some madman wants you to believe they mean eg that redemption = genocide. This is without doubt, first and foremost an anti-Nazi interpretation that consigns their false appropriation of Wagner to the dung heap of history where it belongs. If we speak of "apologist interpretations" of Wagner, let it refer to those lunatic apologists for these bizarre Nazi perversions of his fundamentally socialist writings.

The cover of the 1869 publication of das Judenthum in der Musik: