„Wälsche Majestät”: Die Meistersinger and the German Volk

Habt acht! Uns drohen üble Streich': -
zerfällt erst deutsches Volk und Reich,
in falscher wälscher Majestät
kein Fürst bald mehr sein Volk versteht;
und wälschen Dunst mit wälschem Tand
sie pflanzen uns in deutsches Land.
Was deutsch und echt wüßt' keiner mehr,
lebt's nicht in deutscher Meister Ehr'.
Drum sag' ich euch:
ehrt eure deutschen Meister,
dann bannt ihr gute Geister!
Und gebt ihr ihrem Wirken Gunst,
zerging in Dunst
das heil'ge röm'sche Reich,
uns bliebe gleich
die heil'ge deutsche Kunst!

IIIte Aufzug Finale Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg 

I should mention that this is a companion post to the one on Tristan und Isolde entitled Tristan, Marx and the Subjugation of the Irish. Since I had written on Tristan, with that in mind I thought I would follow up with something on Die Meistersinger.

Die Meistersinger was the most abused work during the years of the German Third Empire. The excessive credit being given to the intelligence of the National Socialists by their commentators and latter-day apologists, is summed up by Ernst Bloch, the Young Hegelian philosopher, himself the son of an assimilated Jewish father:

The music of the Nazis is not the Prelude to Die Meistersinger, but rather the Horst-Wessel-Lied; they deserve credit for nothing else, and no more can or should be given to them.

Quoted from Bloch's Über Wuzerln des Nazismus (1939) in David B. Dennis's essay in Wagner's Meistersinger

One lie commonly repeated is that the 1934 propaganda film The Triumph of the Will entirely uses music from Die Meistersinger to the point that it is popularly taken for granted as being some Eternal Truth. However, as David Dennis points out about the opening of the film leading into "the famous sequence showing sublime cloud banks surrounding Hitler's plane". That this sequence is accompanied by music from Die Meistersinger is universally taken for grant. However, this far from the truth:

Woven into contrapuntal texture and performed by full orchestra, the identity of this theme remains obscure for several bars, but gradually reveals itself as the haunting and ultimately cursed tune of Die Fahne hoch!—better known as the Horst-Wessel-Lied. 

David B. Dennis P99 Wagner's Meistersinger

In one of the last published posts, we discussed how, until Nationalist Socialist censorship and political suppression of all opposition crushed them, there was an active resistance from stage directors to artificially Nazified interpretations of Wagner. During the Weimar Republic years, there were productions of Die Meistersinger that presented a vigorously contrarian view (David B. Dennis in Wagner's Meistersinger).

For a start, it should be blindingly obvious that the real hero of Die Meistersinger, Hans Sachs, is a humble people's hero — a shoemaker, and lonely widower. He may not work with a sickle, but he works with a hammer in hand.

He is the very personification of the humblest of the humble proletariate. So humble is he that all the world tramples his work underfoot. Yet he rises to become the hero of the people.

Walther, who he helps win the singing competition is, plainly obviously, the spontaneous people choice. The people will have none of this authoritarian business of the choice of the winner being forced upon them from above by "experts" who have all sorts of pompous reasons why they think they know better. Hans Sachs effectively helps the people to rise up against their elders to earn a people's victory. These people are all decent, humble folk: shoemakers, tailors, bakers, and their apprentices. There is no doubt whatsoever that the victory at the end of Die Meistersinger is a victory of the wisdom of the Proletariat, and their rejection of imposition of authority.

I was tempted to call Walter the democratic people's choice, but there is probably more to it than that. I strongly suspect that Wagner has fully digested and then "emotionalised" the anarchist ideological framework of his Dresden uprising friend, Michael Bakunin. It is this very framework that lead Wagner away from an acceptance of Communism. This is what Wagner wrote about Communism in The Fatherland Union Paper:

Do you think that you scent in this the teachings of communism? 

Are you then so stupid or wicked as to confound a theory so senseless as that of communism with that which is absolutely necessary to the salvation of the human race from its degraded servitude [to capitalism]?

This is very clearly a rejection of Marx and Engel's Communist Party Manifesto published in 21st of February 1848, several months ahead of Wagner's Fatherland Union Paper, which was first read out on the 16th of June, 1848.

The Communist Party Manifesto dated February, 1848

While both Wagner and Bakunin accept the critique of capitalism, Bakunin's fundamental opposition to the Marxist solution lies in that he feels that it transfers to much power to a centralised Communist state, which itself is not subject to external scrutiny, checks or balances. In Marxism, Freedom and the State, Bakunin wrote:

All work is to be performed in the employ and pay of the State – such is the fundamental principle of Authoritarian Communism of State Socialism. . . .The State will be also the only Capitalist, banker; money-lender, organiser, director of all national labour and distributor of its products. Such is the ideal, the fundamental principle of modern Communism. 

In Statism and Anarchy, Bakunin further wrote:

Ultimately, from whatever point of view we look at this question, we come always to the same sad conclusion, the rule of the great masses of the people by a privileged minority. The Marxists say that this minority will consist of workers. Yes, possibly of former workers, who, as soon as they become the rulers of the representatives of the people, will cease to be workers and will look down at the plain working masses from the governing heights of the State; they will no longer represent the people, but only themselves and their claims to rulership over the people. Those who doubt this know very little about human nature. . . the pseudo-People’s State will be nothing but a despotic control of the populace by a new and not at all numerous aristocracy of real and pseudo-scientists.

I suspect that Wagner was perfectly aware of and familiar with all of these ideas, which he had probably discussed with his friend.

Bakunin, rather prophetically, argued that the Marxist Totalitarianism of the Proletariat was just another form of totalitarianism of a state given absolute dictatorial power, with maliciously false and paternalistic pretensions to representing the people. It is a state ruled by the elite of the so-called scientific Marxists, who think that because of their pseudo-scientific theories, they always know better than the people. In other words, the problem is that it is a form of rule imposed from the top downwards, and thus hardly better than monarchism. Bakunin's ideal was that of a society in which the order was created from the bottom upwards — a social order that emerged spontaneously from the grass roots. He called this ideal, for want of a better term, anarchism:

In accordance with this belief, we neither intend nor desire to thrust upon our own or any other people any scheme of social organisation taken from books or concocted by ourselves. We are convinced that the masses of the people carry in themselves, in their instincts (more or less developed by history), in their daily necessities, and, in their conscious or unconscious aspirations, all the elements of the future social organisation. We seek this ideal in the people themselves. Every state power, every government, by its very nature places itself outside and over the people and inevitably subordinates them to an organisation and to aims which are foreign to and opposed to the real needs and aspirations of the people. We declare ourselves the enemies of every government and every state power, and of governmental organisation in general. We think that people can be free and happy only when organised from the bottom up in completely free and independent associations, without governmental paternalism though not without the influence of a variety of free individuals and parties.

From Statism and Anarchy

It is the sort of spontaneous grass roots uprising of the sort we have seen in the Occupy Movement.

Bakunin was further critical of modern democracy because he felt that political parties tended to turn into large, corrupt and power hungry organisations, which again made false, paternalistic claims to knowing what was good for the people. In the modern world, you can see how the power structure built up by just one or two dominant political parties manipulates the media, whose independence has long being compromised by large interest groups of power-brokers, and works in conjunction with powerful financial and industry groups to worm their way into power by exerting their leverage over public opinion.

Compare this with what Wagner wrote in Erkenne dich selbst (February-March issue of Bayreuther Blätter, 1881)*:

. . . "Conservative", "Liberal", "Conservative-Liberals", then "Democrats", "Socialists" or "Social-Democrats" etc . . . [w]e see there solely a struggle of interests whose object is generally to just to fight it out, and is not noble at all. It is obvious that whoever is most ruthlessly organised towards their interests will carry away the prize.  

. . . „Konservative”, „Liberal” und „Konservativ-Liberale”, endlich „Demokraten”, „Sozialisten” oder auch „Sozial-Demokraten” u.s.w  . . . [w]ir sehen da einzig einem Widerstreite von Interessen zu, deren Objekt den Streitenden gemein und eben nicht edel ist: offenbar wird aber, wer für das Interesse selbst am stärksten, d.h. hier am rücksichtslosesten, organisiert ist, den Preis davon tragen.

He ends the passage by suggesting that this ruthless power struggle between parties pushing their own self-interests is just a "web of deceit of the daemon of suffering humanity" (ein Truggespinnst des Dämons der leidenden Menschheit). Earlier in the same essay, he also identifies "money as the daemon choking the innocence of mankind" ("Geld als der Unschuld würgende Dämon der Menschheit"). In other words, these political parties are just deceitful, corrupt and power hungry organisations greedy for gold.

He sees democratic party politics as being a dirty fight, won by whoever most ruthlessly schemes and backstabs to win the prize of power — just the like protagonists fighting over the Ring of the Nibelung, which Wagner suggests in this same essay, has transformed itself in our age into a share market portfolio (Börsen-Portefeuille). His critique of modern so-called democracy could have been taken straight out of Bakunin's writings. It is also a critique of everything corrupting modern so-called democracy, which could just have equally been taken straight out of Noam Chomsky.

This is why I hesitate to call the people's uprising in Die Meistersinger, a democratic victory, for it goes further than that towards the ideal of a democracy that purer than democracy. The spontaneity of the people's victory is more like the sort of bottom-up organisation idealised in Bakunin's anarchist-socialist ideology. It is an ideal of a society shorn of authoritarian power structures.

Naturally, there are going to be those that say Die Meistersinger is just comic fun, and there are no complex analyses of power structures in society in there. You could also say George Bernard Shaw's My Fair Lady is just a fun story about a flower-girl who gets taught how to speak with a posh accent and that there are therefore no socialist ideas in there at all!

Bryan Magee makes the excellent point that Shaw consciously learned from Wagner the art of "emotionalising the intellect" (Wagner and Philosophy P124).

At this point, I want to come back to Hans Sach's words at the close of Die Meistersinger. For a start, Sach warns against "wälsche Majestät". This passage is nearly always totally wrongly translated as follows:

Beware! Evil tricks threaten us
if the German people and kingdom should
one day decay, under a false, foreign rule,
soon no prince would understand his people;
and foreign mists with foreign vanities
they would plant in our German land.

Habt acht! Uns drohen üble Streich': -
zerfällt erst deutsches Volk und Reich,
in falscher wälscher Majestät
kein Fürst bald mehr sein Volk versteht;
und wälschen Dunst mit wälschem Tand
sie pflanzen uns in deutsches Land.

The word "wälsch" is, in modern German spelling, written "welsch". The term "welsch" was used at the time of the Holy Roman Empire to denote the Latin people within its realm. Wälsch also denotes Romano-Celtic in general. Western European people are, in this view, broadly divided as being Romano-Celtic or Germanic. Wälsch means Latin or Roman, and should never under any circumstance be translated as "foreign".  Even today, the French speaking part of Switzerland is called "Welschland". Wagner explains this expression in his essay Was ist deutsch? where he says:

According to the results of the latest and most thorough research, the word "deutsch" does not denote the name of any particular people. There were no people in history to whom the original name Deutsch can be attributed. Jacob Grimm has demonstrated that "diutisk" or "deutsch" denotes nothing less than whatever was native, to use readily understandable spoken language. In earlier times this was thus diametrically opposed to the word "wälsch", which the German tribes understood to mean the Gallo-Celtic tribes.

Das wort „deutsch” bezeichnet nach dem Ergebnis der neuesten und gründlichsten Forschungen nicht einen bestimmten Volksnamen; es gibt kein Volk in der Geschichte, welches sich den ursprünglichen Namen „Deutsche” beilegen könnte. Jacob Grimm hat dagegen nachgewiesen, daß „diutisk” oder „deutsch” nichts anderes bezeichnet als das, was uns, den in uns verständlicher Sprache Redenden, heimisch ist. So ward frühzeitig dem „wälsch” entgegengesetzt, worunter die germanischen Stämme das den gälisch-keltischen Stämmen Eigene begriffen. 

p55 Was ist deutsch? Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen Band X (old German spelling retained)

Modern dictionaries will give you the translation of "Latin" or "Roman" for "welsch". The word is etymologically related to the English word "Welsh" because it can also refer to the Celts, however, this is historical since Celtic was spoken on the European continent only up till the mid first millenium AD. However, by the time of the Holy Roman Empire, "welsch" referred almost exclusively to Latin peoples. 

The verb "zerfallen" does not mean "to politically come under rule" either, but just means to "decay", "decine", "fall" or "degenerate". Once again, the blindingly obvious thing is the setting in the period of the Reformation. Sachs is warning against a "decay" into Roman Catholicism, although he is also alluding to Latin artistic tastes — it has been shown by Egon Voss that Beckmesser's** song is a parody of Italian operatic conventions. My translation of this entire passage would be:

Take heed! Evil coups threaten us,
Even if the German people and realm should lapse
into false Roman majesty
when no more should a prince understand his people
and Roman haze with Roman baubles
they plant in our German land.
What is German and true none shall know no longer
and live no more in honour of their German masters.
That is why I say to you:
Honour your German masters,
Then the good spirits will be enchanted with you!
And if they endow your work with their favour,
though the Holy Roman Empire
should dissolve into haze
there will still remain for us
Holy German art!

The phrase "false Roman majesty" is first and foremost about a decay into Roman imperialism: or more exactly, Catholic authoritarianism. With this, the reference to Catholic haze and baubles or trinkets ("Tand") also makes full sense. There is strong argument to be made in favour of translating wälsch as "Catholic":

Even if the German people and realm should lapse
into phony Catholic pomp
when no more should a prince understand his people
and Catholic haze with Catholic baubles
they plant in our German land.

Wagner pretty much explains all of this in his essay Wollen wir Hoffen? (1879). There he paints his vision of the destiny (das Müssen) of the German Volk. He starts by discussing Luther's German translation of Corinthians 14:11.

Therefore if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me.

The Luther translation into German substitutes the word un-German for barbaric:

Therefore if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him un-German, if he that speaketh shall be un-German unto me.

The word "un-German" is being used in the same sense as the expression "un-American" is still used in the United States.

Wagner goes on to discuss Luther and the Reformation by suggesting that there would be those who thought that:

it would have been better if Luther had been burnt along with other heretics. The Roman Renaissance would have also included Germany and brought us up to the same cultural level as our reborn neighbours. I believe that the desire for this is not only un-German [undeutsch], but even barbaric in the sense [of the word] used by our Roman neighbours.

es würde besser gewesen sein, wenn Luther, wie andere Ketzer, verbrannt worden wäre, die römische Renaissance würde dann auch Deutschland eingenommen und uns auf die gleiche Kulturehöhe mit unseren umgeborenen Nachbaren gebrach haben. Ich glaube annehmen zu dürfen, daß dieser Wunsch Manchem nicht nur undeutsch, sondern auch barbarisch in Sinne unserer romanischen Nachbarn, vorkommen wird.

Wollen wir hoffen? My translation 

Wagner explains to us that by "Roman neighbours", he is alluding here to the French translation of the lines in Corinthians with its use of the term "barbare" in place of "undeutsch" ("un-German"). He quotes the French version of these lines:

Si donc je n'entends pas ce que signifient les paroles, je serai barbare pour celui à qui je parle; et celui qui me parle sera barbare pour moi.

However, Wagner does openly state in Wollen wir hoffen? that the Protestant Church had also degenerated along with the modern state, into precisely the barbaric ("barbarisch") state of imperialistic militarism, and authoritarianism—corrupted by the thirst for money and power—that Luther had rebelled against:

We no longer even have the laurel branch for valour, nor the olive branch, nor the palm twig. For that we only have the industry branch which overshadows the entire world under the shelter of its strategically deployed arms manufacture.

Und doch haben wir nicht einmal mehr den Lorbeerzweig für die Tapferkeit: den Ölzweig, den Palmenszweig aber auch nicht, dafür nur den Industriezweig, der gegenwärtig die ganze Welt unter dem Schutze der strategisch angewandten Gewehrfabrikation beschattet.

Wollen wir hoffen? My translation 

Wagner had recognised that the arms race between European states that eventually lead to the First World War had already begun. The future he foresaw in this political state of affairs was a grim and pessimistic one. In Was ist deutsch? Wagner further goes on to denounce aggressive militarism as being un-German (in the sense of Luther's use of the word as meaning "barbaric"), and Roman (i.e. "wälsch"):

in their yearning for "German glory", the Germans habitually dream of nothing other than the reproduction of something similar to the resurrection of the Roman Empire, whereby even the good natured Germans attain an unmistakable lust for domination and a craving for supremacy over other people. They forget how detrimental Roman statesmanship was to the prosperity of the German people.

in der Sehnsucht nach „deutscher Herrlichkeit” kann sich der Deutsche aber gewöhnlich noch nichts anderes träumen als etwas der Wiederherstellung des römischen Kaiserreiches Ähnliches, wobei selbst dem gutmütigsten Deutschen ein unverkennbares Herrschergelüst und Verlangen nach Obergewalt über andere Völker ankommt. Er vergißt, wie nachteilig der römische Staatsgedanke bereits auf das Gedeihen der deutschen Völker gewirkt hatte. 

p55 Was ist deutsch? Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen Band X (German spelling modernised)  

Even the fascist salute was called the "Roman" salute — they wrongly assumed it to be an official Imperial Roman salute:

The notion of an official Imperial "Roman salute" is a modern myth 

Notice these Imperial Roman styled standards in this parade, where the Roman SPQR is replaced by the Nazi Party NSDAP:

NSDAP: National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiters Partei

SPQR: Senatus Populusque Romanus

The Roman persecution of the Jews is ancient. The Arch of Titus in Rome depicts the plunder of the Temple of Jerusalem

Yet despite this degeneration of state and church into a Roman imperialist, "wälsch" and un-German "barbarism", Wagner hoped that somehow Germany would rise above this to rediscover its true destiny again:

This is the question, and in answering it we have to search for what that destiny [das Müssen] must be. Here we must now contemplate whether that which the Germans lost in their fight for Reformation, and which had to be given up — unity, and a power of position in Europe. In contrast to that they kept the unique position through which they were destined, not to be the rulers [Herrschern] of the world, but its ennoblers [Veredlern]. For what we are not destined for, that we cannot be. We can with the help of all of the Germanic peoples*** related to us, bring around the whole world to [the way of] our unique cultural creation, without ever becoming the rulers of the world.

Dies ist auch die Frage; und in ihrer Beantwortung haben wir das Müssen aufzusuchen. Hier will es uns nun dünken, als ob Das, was die Deutschen in ihren Reformationskämpfen verloren, Einheit, und europäische Machtstellung, von ihnen aufgegeben werden mußte, und dagegen die Eigentümlichkeit der Anlagen sich zu erhalten, durch welche sie zwar nicht zu Herrschern, wohl aber zu Veredlern der Welt bestimmt sein dürften. Was wir nicht sein müßen, können wir auch nicht sein. Wir können mit Hilfe aller uns verwandten germanischen Stämme die ganze Welt mit unseren eigentumlichen Kulturschöpfungen durchbringen, ohne jemals Welt-Herrscher zu werden.

Wollen wir hoffen? My translation 

And that, my dear readers, is the real meaning of the warning by Hans Sachs against "falsche wälsche Majestät". It means that the Germans must rise up above their current power and money hungry barbaric imperialism to fulfil their true destiny to be the "ennoblers" of the world and not its "oppressors". That is why it is so utterly tragic that Hans Sach's idealistic words have been so terribly misused and abused. It is hard not to shed tears to think how terrible the history of this abuse has been.

As for Siegfried Wagner, we know that his impression of Hitler was that he was little more than a "fraud and upstart" (quoted from Ian Kershaw in Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris page 188). At which point, I will ask my readers what they think Richard Wagner would have really thought—his vegetarianism, pacifism and anti-militarism not withstanding—of European fascism in light of the fact that the three leading figures in this movement were all Roman Catholic and mostly "wälsch": Hitler, Mussolini and Franco. Likewise, the Croatian fascists, the Ustaše, were also fanatically Catholic.

The Austrian Hitler remained a member of the Roman Church until the very day he died, and in 1941 he told one of his generals, Gerhard Engel, that: "I am now, as before, a Catholic and will always remain so" (Toland: Adolf Hitler).

Hitler felt he was on a divine mission to fulfill the "work of the Almighty Lord" by exterminating the offspring of Judas

The Jesuit Monsignor Tiso stated that: "Catholicism and Nazism have much in common. They work hand in hand in reforming the world".

Hitler explained that his mission to exterminate the Jews was an historical fulfilment of an old Christian tradition:

As for the Jews, I am just carrying on with the same policy which the Catholic church has adopted for fifteen hundred years, when it has regarded the Jews as dangerous and pushed them into ghettos etc., because it knew what the Jews were like. I don't put race above religion, but I do see the danger in the representatives of this race for Church and State, and perhaps I am doing Christianity a great service.

From: p. 26 The Nazi Persecution of the Churches by J.S. Conway, 1968.

Hitler further stated that:

I learned much from the Order of the Jesuits. Until now, there has never been anything more grandiose, on the earth, than the hierarchical organisation of the Catholic church. I transferred much of this organisation into my own party.

From Edmond Paris: The Secret History of Jesuits. 

Upon Hitler's death, Franco paid tribute to him in Reforme on the 3rd of May, 1945 with the words:

Adolf Hitler, son of the Catholic Church, died while defending Christianity. It is therefore understandable that words cannot be found to lament over his death, when so many were found to exalt his life. Over his mortal remains stands his victorious moral figure. With the palm of the martyr, God gives Hitler the laurels of Victory. 

From Edmond Paris: The Secret History of Jesuits. 

It is often forgotten that Wagner held a sectarian hostility towards Roman Catholicism that was equal of that towards Judaism. He even confided to Cosima that he felt hemmed in from really opening up with this hostility for fear of offending his father-in-law, Franz Liszt. When Hermann Levi made the mistake of saying something only mildy favourable about the Jesuits, opposing a repressive law against them, when Wagner exploded with outrage. Cosima notes:

Richard became very angry and depicted in lively words all the damage which the Catholic Church had done to Germany. 11th August, 1872

Wagner had a strong tendency towards cursing about "Jews and Jesuits"****  In the case of Die Meistersinger, there is far more reason to think that the reference to "falsher wälscher Majestät" really represents an veiled attack against Catholic authoritarianism than anything anti-Judaic. There is a stronger argument to be made for Beckmesser being a Catholic than a Jew. It seems all too blindingly obvious, in a work set in the age of the Reformation, that Die Meistersinger should have hidden anti-Catholic undertones to it.







Notes:

* It should be noted however, that despite his rejection of the Socialist Party, elsewhere in Kunst und Religion, written a year later in 1880, Wagner expresses his sympathy for socialism:

Jede, selbst die anscheinend gerechte Anforderung, welche der sogenannte Sozialismus an die durch unsere Zivilisation ausgebildete Gesellschaft erheben möchte, stellt, genau erwogen, die Berechtigung dieser Gesellschaft sofort in Frage. . . Dennoch könnte man selbst den heutigen Sozialismus als sehr beachtenswert von Seiten unserer staatlichen Gesellschaft ansehen . . . 

Those, in itself seemingly equitable demands, which so called socialism would like to levy through our civilised societies — carefully considered — call the authority of this society into question immediately. . . However, modern socialism can be seen as being quite remarkable from the side of state society . . .

** Some authors have been desperately trying to wringe sort of anti-Semitic message out of Die Meistersinger for some time. There is better grounds to find an anti-Catholic message in this Reformation era work. Wagner's paranoia towards Jesuit conspiracies is well known, although just as he had Jewish friends, he also had Catholic ones. It is also a total myth that the role of Stadtschreiber could ever be given to a Jew in the Reformation era. Concerning the ethnic identify of Beckmesser, Wagner himself stated to Cosima on 16th March 1873 that:

with that venerable pedantry, I thought of the Germans in their true essence, and in its best light. 

mit dem ehrwürdigen Pedanterie, dacht ich mir den Deutschen in seinem wahren Wesen, in seinem besten Licht.

Band 2 Cosimas Tagebuch P655

Yet again, most writers prefer to pass off baseless speculation as Eternal Truth rather than cite primary textual references. It is perhaps more likely that the characteristics of authoritarianism, and pedantic dogmatism are being satirised as Catholic ("Jesuit") traits.

*** By this Wagner clarifies that he means the people of: "Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland" ie all Germanic Protestant countries.

**** In an entry to his Brown Book dated the first of September, 1865 Wagner writes: "To me this Catholic rubbish is repugnant to the very depth of my soul." Even if Wagner tended to refer to "Jews and Jesuits" in the same breath with contempt, there is no reason to think that he wished for the mass murder of either in concentration camps. This sort of sectarian and confessional hostility to those of a different faith was hardly unusual in his time. Even in the United States, there were efforts at this time to barr the migration of Irish Catholics or to strip them of voting rights.

Bibliography

My previous published post on The Fatherland Union Paper. Very unread, it is still one of the best posts in the blog.

Michael Bakunin: Statism and Anarchy (1873)

Michael Bakunin: Marxism, Freedom and the State (1867-72)

Ian Kershaw: Hitler 1889-1936 — Hubris.
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1ST edition (April 2000)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0393320359
ISBN-13: 978-0393320350

Bryan Magee: Wagner and Philosophy

Publisher: Penguin (September 6, 2001)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
Language: English
ASIN: B002RI9220

Edmond Paris: The Secret History of Jesuits.
Publisher: Chick Pub (August 1, 1983)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0937958107
ISBN-13: 978-0937958100
Written by a former Jesuit, it smacks of a conspiracy theory book, but it does brings to life, with a good modernised insight, the sort of paranoid anti-Catholic mentality that Wagner had.

John Toland: Adolf Hitler

Publisher: Anchor; (December 1, 1991)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0385420536
ISBN-13: 978-0385420532

Wagner's Meistersinger: Performance, History, Representation

Nicholas Vazsonyi (Editor)
Publisher: University of Rochester Press (September 1, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1580461689
ISBN-13: 978-1580461689

Egon Voss: Wagners Meistersinger als Oper des deutschen Bürgertums
In Richard Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: Texte, Materialien, Kommentare,
ed. Attila Csampai and Dietmar Holland.
Rienbek: Rowold, 1981


Richard Wagner: Wollen wir hoffen?
In Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen Band X.
Verlag von E.W. Fritzsch, Leipzig, 1883
No acceptable published English translation available


Richard Wagner: Kunst und Religion
In Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen Band X.
Verlag von E.W. Fritzsch, Leipzig, 1883
No acceptable published English translation available


Richard Wagner: The Fatherland Union Paper
Quoted from the translation published by Praeger
I have managed to source the German Urtext of the Fatherland Union Paper — currently being shipped from Germany