It is based on a symposium to which selected guests were invited to contribute an essay. These have been collected into this volume. Some of the essays are translated into English from German, including the essay by Saul Friedländer. Other contributors include Joachim Fest and Dieter Borchmeyer. Unfortunately, this books seems to be available only in German. It is an interesting book, and by bedtime I had devoured over half of it.
Saul Friedländer is a famous historian, specialising in the Third Empire period. He himself survived the era by being hidden away by Catholic nuns in France. Sir Ian Kershaw often quotes him with great respect, although he does not take part in this symposium. Joachim Fest is another well respected historian, and journalist, on the era and he does contribute an essay in the book. The means that this collection of essays is the only book written by serious historians on Richard Wagner and his relation to the Third Empire.
The most interesting contribution was by Saul Friedländer himself. He has come to the same conclusions about Wagner as I have. In particular, he confirms my reading of Das Judentum in der Musik, as being an assimilationist document. I have gone through my detailed study of this essay in the following published posts:
1. Overview of the essay
2. The final controversial paragraph
These constitute the most detailed discussion available in any publication format. They are much more detailed than anything in Richard Wagner im Dritte Reich. I have also revised both of the posts.
The essays in the book present various points of view. The most appalling one involves a deliberate misquotation of the controversial final paragraph of Das Judentum in der Musik. This is by Hartmut Zelinsky, who teaches at the Lugwig-Maximilian University in Munich. He specialises in literature. He looks like he deserves to be fired, because he deliberately tampers with evidence. On p314 he states that he is quoting Richard Wagner who is alleged to have written:
Nehmt rückhaltlos an diesem selbstvernichtenden, blutigen Kampfe [bloody battles] teil, so sind wir einig und untrennbar!
The addition of the words "bloody battles" (the word Kampf as in Mein Kampf) is his own invention.
Here is the original published version along with my translation:
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!
Note that all the parts about the spiritual rebirth through self-destruction have been replaced by the notion of a "bloody battle". This changes the meaning of the lines from a figurative self-transformation to a physical battle. Even after tampering with Wagner's text he still fails to explain how murdering Jews would render Jew and gentile "united and without difference". The altered words in Zelinsky's version actually go "so that we will be united and inseparable!" At least he didn't leave off the exclamation mark at the end. Zelinsky alleges that these words are "mocking".
Here is the evidence that the version I cite is correct:
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| Scan from original 1869 publication of the 1850 essay |
I cannot find evidence that Wagner changes the wording of the article for the 1869 reprinting, although he does adds an introduction and afterword. If it is some earlier draft version rather than the final printed version, Zelinsky fails to state this. It is hardly a trivial error to proffer tampered evidence as proof of guilt of having murdered six million innocent people. It is far too serious an allegation to allow a mistake to be overlooked as the result of simple carelessness. Unless of course, Zelinsky's essay is intended as a joke. If so, it is not funny. The citation he quotes for the source is:
Richard Wagner: Die Kunst und die Revolution – Das Judentum in der Musik – Was ist deutsch? Herausgegeben und kommentiert von Tibor Kneif. Munich 1975 p77.
I hereby find Hartmut Zelinsky guilty of tampering with evidence. I find Hartmut Zelinsky guilty of unprofessional behaviour. I find Hartmut Zelinsky guilty of misconduct unbefitting of an academic. Publication of academic material based on falsified data is fraud. Even if the fraud is discovered years later, action should be taken now by firing him immediately.
Fortunately, Saul Friedländer provides an academically responsible and insightful essay on the same subject. The German translation of his essay starts off discussing Wagner's final line about "the redemption of Ahasvar – the Untergang". See my discussion of this final line. Friedländer adds:
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. P168. My translation from the German.
All I could say was "hurray!" I felt fully vindicated for all the hours I had given up translating and analysing the essay. In a world gone mad, the voice of sanity can still be heard. He just confirms exactly what I have been saying about this essay for a long time. It is an enormous relief to me that such a widely respected and famous historian on the Holocaust should come to the exact same conclusion as I have. It is a pity that even Friedländer fails to find the part of the essay where Wagner concedes the need for a "Jerusalemic state":
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| The words "jerusalemischen Reiches" from the 1869 publication Wagner accepted the need for a "Jerusalemic realm" |
That is, Wagner accepted Zionism. Nor does he manage to find the end of the 1869 post-script where Wagner explains that he wants his essay to be understood as a call for "assimilation":
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| Wagner used the word "Assimilation" to explain his position |
There is no ambiguity. It is there for all the world to see in black and white.
Little wonder that Hermann Levi, was to write in a letter to Cosima ten years after Wagner's death:
I know quite well the content of "Judaism in Music" and share the view of that glorious book.
Levi also wrote in a letter to his father, a rabbi:
[Wagner] is the best and noblest of men. Of course our contemporaries misunderstand and slander him. It is the duty of the world to darken those who shine. Goethe did not fare any better. But posterity will one day recognise that he was just as great a man as an artist, which those close to him know already. Even his fight against what he calls “Jewishness” in music and in modern literature springs from the noblest motives. That he harbours no petty anti-Semitism like some country squire or Protestant bigot, is shown by his behaviour toward me, toward Joseph Rubinstein, and by his former relationship with Tausig, whom he loved dearly. The most beautiful thing I have experienced in my life is that I was permitted to be close to such a man, and I thank God for it every day.
Further Reading
1. To see how Joachim Fest's interpretations of Wagner's Judaism in Music further validates my own reading please see this post.
2. Hans Rudolf Vaget comments on the essay by Saul Friedländer:
http://humanitiesunderground.wordpress.com/2011/02/19/the-rienzi-effect/
Intelligently written and scholarly, it is worth reading.
3. My review of Joachim Köhler's Wagner's Hitler:
thinkclassical.blogspot.com/2012/04/book-review-joachim-kohler-wagners.html
4. See my thread on Arnold Schoenberg's Moses und Aron: Schoenberg interprets Wagner's Judaism in Music along identical lines to Saul Friedländer.
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