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| Eugen Karl Dühring's (1833-1921) |
Dühring argued that the Jewish character was racially determined to such a degree as to be permanently fixed in the blood. Dühring therefore argued that assimilation was therefore impossible, since Jews would always remain Jews and outsiders. The only solution to the Jewish problem, it was argued, was annihilation of the "parasitic races" rather than assimilation. Predictably, you are going to get the usual hoard of nutty writers claiming that Wagner went ape in enthusiastically embracing Dühring's proto-National Socialist ideas.
The source for this myth about Wagner's alleged enthusiasm for Dühring appears to be Marcel Prawy in Richard Wagner - Leben und Werk.
On p48 of this book, Prawy says that:
In the “Jewish Question as Racial Harm (1881)” Dühring expressed his racial theory, explaining that the people who have ripened under the cool heavens have the duty “to eradicate the parasitic races, just as one would eradicate poisonous snakes and wild predators”. As Dühring was also an enemy of Christianity, Cosima says on the 20th of October 1879 that she and Richard were shocked by it. Nonethelesss, Wagner had planned in 1879 to place Dühring in a leading position of the Bayreuther Blätter.
In „Die Judenfrage als Rassenschädlichkeit” (1881) bekannte sich Dühring zur Rassentheorie und erklärte. daß „der unter dem kühlen Himmel gereifte nordische Mensch die Pflicht hat, die parasitären Rassen auszurotten, wie man eben Giftschlagen und wilde Raubtiere ausrotten muß”. Da Dühring auch ein Feind des Christentums war, gab Cosima am 20. Oktober 1879, daß sie und Richard darüber erschrocken waren. Trotzdem plante Wagner noch im Jahr 1879, Dühring führend bei den „Bayreuther Blätter” einzusetzen.
Christopher Nicholson, on p154 of his book, quotes Prawy as saying that Dühring was an anti-Semitic thinker who was given a "leadership role in the publication of the Bayreuther Blätter in 1879". However, Prawy gives us no sources for his information about Wagner allegedly planning to place Dühring in a "leading position" (Prawy does not specifically use the term "leadership") at the Bayreuther Blätter. I went through Cosima's diary, and nothing of the sort is mentioned there. 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. Apart from all of the backward and Romantic elements, which the Wagnerian circle is composed of, it would hard the Blätter, if it were to publish something from my pen. To my astonishment, the editor of the named Blätter, Herr von Wolzogen, reassured me that this would not be the case and urgently repeated his request.
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 Publikum des bayreuther Komponisten zum grossen Teil für meine durchgreifende Behandlung der Sache für nicht empfänglich genug hielte. Allen den rückläufigen und romantischen Elementen gegenüber, aus denen sich der wagnersche Kreis zusammensetzte, würden sich die Blätter selbst schaden, wenn sie so etwas aus meiner Feder veröffentlichten. Zu meiner Überraschung beruhigte sich der Redacteur der genannten Blätter, Herr von Wolzogen, hierbei nicht, sondern wiederholte dringender seinen Antrag.
So the most that Wolzogen did was to try to gain academic recognition for the journal he edited.
At that point Dühring says that Wolzogen made suggestions that he wanted to make Dühring a "Kapellmeister". So Dühring submitted off an essay, and was apparently told by Wolzogen that Wagner allegedly agreed with all of his points. Dühring was allegedly assured that his essay would be distributed as a brochure. Instead, Dühring says that what appeared in print was far too tame in tone for his liking. He thought that these "gentle steps" stood in marked contrast to his more forceful thoughts. Dühring was so offended that he demanded the return of his manuscript. He accused the Bayreuth journal of "disloyalty" and swore to have nothing more to do with them.
It is possible that Wolzogen and Wagner did not see eye to eye on Dühring. The initiative to encourage Dühring to write for the journal appears to have come from Wolzogen. Likewise, the suggestion that Wagner agreed with him "on all points". Wagner then possibly poured cold water over Wolzogen's initiatives once he read Dühring's essay. 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. She says 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). She thought that Dühring's reference to Wagner was "sad".
I have not been able to find the exact work by Dühring that Wagner had read. However, the obnoxious Dühring later published a lengthy polemic reminiscent of Joachim Köhler:
I have not been able to find the exact work by Dühring that Wagner had read. However, the obnoxious Dühring later published a lengthy polemic reminiscent of Joachim Köhler:
I do not even wish to mention in the first place, the judgment of those who were, like the composer Richard Wagner, somewhat antipathetic towards Jewry. Embarrassed at first by it, they yet appeared early in the scene against the Jewish nature. It may rather be remembered in the first place because, how the Jew Heinrich Heine himself made fun of the "great Beerenmeyer." Even in concealing his contempt towards Meyerbeer, Herr Richard Wagner was the chief modern pioneer who made known the unsuitability of Jews for creative musical expression. In any case, already in the synagogues and in their religion, their racial ugliness can be observed. A collection of Jew, such as a Jewish school, immediately betrays a language and manners contrary to an innate talent for art. Such a demeanour is quite at odds with serious human language and civilisation. Ugliness predominates in their noisy eruptions and crude excitement.
If Wagner's book on Judaism in Music already pointed out the thoroughly unsightly affectations and Jewish music condemned as inartistic, then this had to mean something. It meant a lot, because Mr. Wagner, who himself loved noisiness in music, could not set the most exacting standards for the noise of the Sinai Muse. In that the Jewish press attacked the Bayreuth Orpheus, this was less motivated by the structural constitution of his music, than due to the right weather conditions – that his German nationalist material would not agree to the general Judaification of the spirit. The reactionary romanticism, the generally quite peculiar style of Wagnerian texts, and overall associated manner of thinking found here, were all points to attack, as well as their pretext. However, the Hebrews had quite decisively moved against German nationalism, as well as towards any reactionary romantic embellishment and risible freaks of nature. In actual fact, later, the contrast between Herr Wagner and the Jews faded even further. The emancipation of the Jews, which he himself set in opposition to the emancipation of the Jews, his own matters not withstanding, did not work out in the end.
In the wake of the lyre of Orpheus Bayreuth, there were many wealthy Jews and their remarkably moderate donations for the notoriously luxurious and expensive productions of the “music of the future”. Since he believed he could not miss this opportunity and the present day clang of the Jews gold belonged to decking out the art of the future, he made his anti-Jewish dissonances always tend toward softer chords, beneath which those metallic clangs become inaudible. His own journal, the Bayreuther Blätter, tended at the end of the seventies to write in such gentle language about the Jews, that even where this came to be many pages long, it all the while fundamentally avoided the expression "Jews". Yes, it is then left to question those “foreign element”, as Herr Wagner would put it, thereby elevating himself into a higher spiritual sphere, and yet offsetting himself in the opposite direction.
Those of the Jewish tribe contributing to the Bayreuth Orpheus cult are hereby absolved of their Jewish characteristics. This is more than an indulgence. Herr Wagner seems to think he had attained the art, mediated through Wagner Societies and patronage certificates, of redeeming the Jews from themselves – something even Christ not once managed to achieve. Yes, Herr Wagner, who imagined himself a kind of universal reformer wanted thereby to collect another tax from the Jews. The truth shorn of deception is that Herr Wagner was unable to even redeem himself of the Jews. Yet one merit that is not to be denied, is that as an independent writer he entered early on the scene on regarding the Jewish Question. There are also some features associated with [his] art. He also gave expression to the secret literary persecution of the Jews.
For an artist, especially such as one whose imaginative settings can be explained fantastically according to the not so demanding Schopenhauer. We can understand the lack of political and social judgment. Noted along the way, was the previous characteristic of the whole of Wagner's attitude towards the Jews, written on the good Herr’s face while he was still alive, and which is, now after his death, becoming ever more recognisable in its truth, both in terms of its Wagnerianism as well as its Jewishness.
In terms of the generally intellectual, or from the purely artistic point of view, nothing of consequence and significantly radical resulted from the Jewish Question, even if it had been deemed in order and normal. It is therefore not surprising that there never emerged anything really significant through the agitation of Herr Wagner with the Jews. Personally, however, the composer and wannabe poet with his somewhat formalised kid-glove approach to his Jews reaped nothing but ingratitude and a petty servant’s little Satyr play.
One of his Jews, a Polish, or rather Polish mix, by the name of Nietzsche ran away from him, making him look thoroughly bad in a duly cowardly way after his death. In a redundant act of servitude, he sipped upon a bit of my criticism of Wagner's conduct, and plucked up a bit of courage, which, he, for him, befittingly expressed. Such runaway servants of their master, who worked at the Jewish mill, then talked as well of distinction and raved about the Master’s game, reminds one of a servant’s ball, at which the various specimens of lackeys address one another with the titles and predicates of their dominions, and likewise systematically give compliments.
From The Jewish Question as a Question of Racial Character (Die Judenfrage als Frage des Racencharakter), 1901 (see end of post for full original text). My own translation (of the rambling and confused original text).
You can see that Dühring was thoroughly enraged at how pathetically weak and inadequate an anti-Semitic document Wagner's Judaism in Music is. He is particularly outraged at Wagner's ultimate affirmation of classical Enlightenment assimilationist values.
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| Wagner made it abundantly clear that he wanted his essay to be understood as call for Jewish "assimilation" |
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| so sind wir einig und ununterschieden! "thus will be be united and without difference!" Image of original 1869 publication |
Unlike for Wagner, for Dühring, the Jews were beyond redemption. His was a proto-Nazi deterministic racist attitude that Wagner refused outright to have anything to do with. Note too that like Joachim Köhler, Dühring desperately suggests that there might be cryptic conspiratorial anti-Semitic messages in Wagner's artworks, but fails to tell us what these might be, other than a figment of his bizarre imagination.
Nicholson further fails to mention the fact that, even if we supposed that Eugen Dühring really had been offered a "leading role" in the Bayreuther Blätter in 1879, the offending racist publication had not appeared yet at the point. When it did appear three years later in 1881, the Bayreuther Blätter played no part whatsoever in its publication. Dühring's article has much notoriety, because it marked a turning point in the history of German anti-Semitism towards a vicious, racially based hostility. It was a kind of racism that Wagner evidently dismissed as being simply "appalling", just as he had rejected Gobineau's racism as a "completely immoral world-order".
It was Dühring's radically racist article that turned Theodor Herzl away from his former belief in assimilation towards Zionism. However, the appearance of Dühring's article do nothing to dampen Herzl's love of Wagner's music. By this, Herzl rightly saw no connection between Wagner and Dühring. Nor did Dühring.
The conclusion is that the story about Wagner offering Dühring a "leading role" in the Bayreuther Blätter is entirely a myth. Given his outright hostility to Wagner, it should come as little surprise that I have to date been unable to find anything written by Dühring in the Bayreuther Blätter. 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. The two men were completely and utterly antithetical to one another.
Note:
*Heinrich Ludwig Wilhelm von Stein (21 November 1833 - May 28, 1896), a German philologist, philosopher and rector of the University of Rostock. Wagner hired him as a tutor to his son. Stein also corresponded with Nietzsche.
Walter Kaufmann, on p 41 of his book Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist, wrote:
Lou Salomé came closest to being accepted by Nietzsche for the role that neither Elisabeth nor Cast could fill. In fact, the only other serious candidate was Heinrich von Stein. who never ceased being a Wagnerian and Nietzsche quickly abandoned hope. The three days the two men spent together in the Engadin, when von Stein came to visit Nietzsche, may have meant much to both: but in a letter to his sister. only a few months later, Nietzsche refers to the youth with cutting condescension. In Ecce Homo. The episode is mentioned twice:
This excellent human being. who had waded into the Wagnerian morass (and even into the Dühringian one [i.e. anti-Semitism]) with all the impetuous simplicity of a Prussian junker, was, during these three days, quasi changed by a gale of freedom, as one who is suddenly lifted to his own height .... I kept saying to him that this was due to the good air up here . . . and that one was not 6.000 feet above Bayreuth for nothing – but he would not believe me [Ecce Homo I 4].
Once when Dr. Heinrich von Stein complained quite honestly that he did not understand a word in my Zarathustra, I said this was quite in order . . . [Ecce Homo III 1].
I have highlighted the comment inserted by Kaufmann into the quote from Ecce Homo. However, from the context of the quotation there is nothing to actually suggest that Nietzsche specifically had Dühring's anti-Semitic writing in mind, or even that he knew of them. Dühring did write more than anti-Semitic works and Friedrich Engels wrote a whole book on him, known popularly as Anti-Dühring. For a while, August Bebel was a admiring reader of Dühring. In short, Kaufmann is trying too hard to wringe an accusation of a vicious racially based Dühringian anti-Semitism out of Nietzsche's polemic.
Spelling modernised and paragraphing introduced
Ich will in erster Linie noch gar nicht das Urteil derjenigen erwähnen, die, wie der Komponist Richard Wagner, dem judentum einigermaßen antipatisch, durch dasselbe zuerst geniert wurden und auch schon früh gegen das jüdische Wesen in die Arena traten. Es mag vielmehr an erster Stelle daran erinnert werden, wie der jude Heinrich Heine sich selbst über den „grossen Beerenmeyer“ lustigmachte, also selbst die Verachtung eben jenes Meyerbeer nicht verhehlte, den Herr Richard Wagner als modernen Hauptbelag für die Unfähigkeit der Juden zu schöpferisch musikalischen Leistungen gekennzeichnet hat. Übrigens ist auch schon in den Synagogen und am Kultus die angestammte Unschönheit zu beobachten. Eine Judenversammlung verrät gleich jeder Judenschule sofort in Sprache und Manieren das angeborene Talent zum Gegenteil aller Kunst. Von ernsthaft menschlicher Sprache und Gesittung liegt solches Gehaben ziemlich weit abseits. Das Hässliche in Lautausstossung und Gliederregung herrscht hier vor.
Wenn schon die Wagnersche Schrift über das Judentum in der Musik auf diese durchaus unästhetischen Allüren hinwies und die Judenmusik als unkünstlerisch verurteilte, so hatte dies etwas zu bedeuten. Es wog viel, weil Herr Wagner, der selbst in der Musik das Geräusch liebte, an das Geräusch der Sinaimuse nicht den allerstrengsten Maßstab legen konnte. Soweit die Jundenpresse gegen den Bayreuther Orpheus ausgegriffen hat, ist dies in den innersten Motiven weniger der formellen Beschaffenheit seiner Musik wegen als in der richtigen Witterung geschehen, dass seine deutschnationalen Stoffe nicht zur allgemeinen Verjudung des Geistes stimmen. Die reactionär romantische und auch übrigens gar seltsame Haltung der Wagnerschen Texte und überhaupt der ganzen zugehörigen Denkweise bot hier die Angriffspunkte und den Vorwand; aber die Hebräer hatten sich noch entschiedener gegen etwas gerührt, was nationaldeutsch, aber zugleich von jeder reaktionär romantischen Verbrämung und von lächerlicher Abnormität freigewesen ware. In der Tat ist auch später der Gegensatz zwischen Herrn Wagner und den Juden mehr verblichen. Die Emancipation von den Juden, die er selbst der Emancipation der Juden entgegengesetzt hatte, ist ihm mit seiner eignen Sache bis ans Ende nicht von Statten gegangen.
Im Gefolge der Leier des Bayreuther Orpheus befanden sich viele reiche Juden und deren ausgiebige milde Spenden für die bekanntlich sehr luxuriösen und kostspieligen Inszenierungen der Zukunftsmusik. Da er dieses Gefolge nicht glaubte missen zu können und der Gegenwartsklang des Judengoldes nun einmal mit zur Ausstaftierung der Zukunftskunst gehörte, so liess er seine antijüdischen Dissonanzen zu immer leiseren Akkorden hinstreben und unter jenem metallischen Klange unhörbar werden. Sein eignes Journal, die Bayreuther Blätter, führte am Ende der siebziger Jahre eine so leise Sprache über die juden, dass es selbst dazu kam, zwar viele Seiten lang über sie zu schreiben, aber unter grundsätzlicher Vermeidung des Ausdrucks Juden. Ja es liess sich dahin vernehmen, dass diejenigen vom ,,fremden Element", die sich Herrn Wagner anschlössen, damit in eine höhere Geistessphäre gehoben, und dass auf diese Weise der Gegensatz ausgeglichen würde.
Die zur Bayreuther Orphik beisteuernden Leute vom Judenstamme wurden also hiemit von ihren Judeneigenschaften losgesprochen. Das ist mehr als Ablass. Herr Wagner verstand hienach anscheinend die Kunst, vermittelst der Wagnervereine und Patronatsscheine die Juden von sich selbst zu erlösen, was nicht einmal Christus erreicht hat. Ja, Herr Wagner, der auch eine Art allgemeinen Reformator vorstellen wollte, trieb dabei von den Juden noch Steuern ein. Die Wahrheit ohne Schein aber ist die, dass Herr Wagner sich selbst nicht hat von den Juden erlösen können. Doch soll ihm das Verdienst nicht bestritten werden, als selbständiger Schriftsteller schon früh in die Judenfrage eingegangen und einige mit der Kunst zusammenhängende Eigenschaften sowie die geheime literarische Verfolgungssucht der Juden zur Sprache gebracht zu haben.
Bei einem Künstler, zumal bei einem solchen, den schon der in Sachen der gesetzten Fantasie nicht allzu anspruchsvolle Schopenhauer für fantastisch erklären konnte, begreift sich der Mangel politischen und socialen Urteils. Nebenbeibemerkt, wurde die vorangehende Charakteristik des gesamten Wagnerschen Verhaltens zu den Juden dem lebenden Herrn ins Gesicht geschrieben und wird nunmehr nach seinem Tode in ihrer Wahrheit sowohl bezüglich der Wagnerei als der Juden wohl immer erkennbarer geworden sein. Mit allgemein geistigen, ja bloß künstlerischen Gesichtspunkten ist, und wäre, auch wenn sie sich in Ordnung und Normalität befunden hätten, der Judenfrage nichts Konsequentes und praktisch Durchgreifendes abzugewinnen gewesen, und es ist daher nicht zu verwundern, dass bei den Reibungen des Herrn Wagner mit den Juden nie etwas Erhebliches herausgekommen. Persönlich hat aber jener Komponist und seinwollende Dichter für seine verhältnismäßige formelle Delikatesse gegen seine eignen Juden nur Undank und ein kleines Bedienten - Satyrnachspielchen eingeerntet.
Einer seiner Juden, ein polnischer oder vielmehr polnisch gemischter, Namens Nietzsche, entlief ihm nämlich und machte ihn, besonders nach dem Tode, in gebührend feiger Weise gründlich schlecht, zu welchem entlassenen Bedientenakt er sich noch obenein erst aus meiner Kritik des Wagnerschen Verhaltens ein Stückchen Urteil angeeignet und ein Bisschen Mut geholt oder, für ihn geziemender ausgedrückt, angetrunken hatte. Solches seinem Herrn entlaufene Gesinde, das auf die Judenmühle arbeitete, redete dann noch obenein von Vornehmheit und faselte von Herrenspiel, was Einen an die Bedientenbälle erinnert, auf denen sich die verschiedenen Lakaienexemplare mit den Titeln und Prädikaten ihrer Herrschaften anreden und gleichsam systematisch bekomplimentieren.
From p91-93 of the book: Die Judenfrage als Frage des Racencharakter, 1901.
Nietzsche explicitly identifies Dühring as an antisemite in the Genealogy of Morals.
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