I am preparing another post about Richard Wagner. Before I publish that post I first wanted to discuss a particular quote that I discovered when reading Richard J. Evans's latest volume in his excellent Third Reich series, The Third Reich in History and Memory.
There is a chapter of this book concerning the question as to whether the atrocities of German colonialists in Africa constitutes a blue-print that leads to the Holocaust. Evans is typically critical of views that tend to see a linear continuity between the Second Empire (German Empire founded by Bismarck, or Zweite Reich) and the Third Empire (Dritte Reich). In this chapter entitled, Blueprint for Genocide?, there is to be found a rather extensive quote taken from Richard Wagner. It would appear that Evans has culled this quote from one of the authors he is criticising for presenting too simplistic an argument to the effect that German colonialism formed a "blueprint for genocide". Unfortunately, Evans includes no bibliographic source citation for the origin of the quote. Nonetheless, I strongly suspect Evans has taken it from a secondary source in the form of a quote from one of the authors he is critiquing without going back to the primary source text to double check whether the quote has been misrepresented.
Here is the passage in question, which has seemingly been cited by an unnamed author to suggest that Wagner had been a supporter of this colonialist form of proto-Nazism:
As the composer Richard Wagner declared in 1848, 'we will sail in ships across the sea and here and there set up a new Germany ... We will do better than the Spanish, for whom the New World became a cleric-ridden slaughterhouse, and differently from the English, for whom it became a treasure-trove. We will do it in a wonderful, German way'.
Richard J. Evans: The Third Reich in History and Memory (Blueprint for Genocide?)
No bibliographic source citation is given for this quotes, nor any indication given as to who the translator of the text might be. However, given that a date of 1848 is given, I suspected it might be Wagner's Fatherland Union Paper. My hunch proved correct as I tracked down the full text of the original source.
However, rather concerningly, this passage that has apparently been alleged to contain an operatic "blueprint for genocide" has been both tampered with and taken out of context from Wagner's revolutionary Fatherland Union Paper of 1848 calling for socialist democracy in a united German republic.
Comparison of the version cited by Evans with an extensive extract from the original primary source text shows that it almost reads like a totally different text. After demanding that "we further insist on the right of every natural born subject, when of age, to a vote", Wagner states:
When by our republican efforts we shall have solved this most important problem for the weal of society, and have established the dignity of the freed man, and established his claim to what we consider his rights, shall we then rest satisfied? No; then only are we reinvigorated for our great effort. For when we have succeeded in solving the emancipation question, thereby assisting in the regeneration [Wiedergeburt] of society, then will arise a new, free, and active race [Geschlecht], then shall we have gained a new mean to aid us towards the attainments of the highest benefits, and then shall we actively disseminate our republican principles.
Then shall we traverse the ocean in our ships, and found here and there a new young Germany [ein junges Deutschland] enriching it with the fruits of our achievements, and educating our children in our principles of human rights, so that they may be propagated everywhere. We shall do otherwise than the Spaniards, who made the new world into a papistic [pfäffisches] slaughter-house; we shall do otherwise than the English, who convert their colonies into huge shops [Krämerkasten] for their own individual profit. Our colonies shall be truly German [deutsch und herrlich], and from sunrise to sunset we shall contemplate a beautiful, free Germany, inhabited, as in the mother country, by a free people. The sun of German freedom and German gentleness shall alike warm and elevate [verklären] Cossack, Frenchmen, Bushmen, and Chinese. You see our republican zeal in this respect has no termination; it pushes on further and further from century to century, to confer happiness on the whole of the human race! Do you call this a Utopian dream?
Fatherland Union Paper in the translation quoted in Praeger
I also managed to track down the full German Urtext to compare the different translations:
Sind wir nun in unsren republikanischen Bestrebungen so weit gelangt, auch diese wichtigste aller Fragen zum Glück und Wohlergehen der staatlichen Gesellschaft zu lösen, sind wir in die Rechte freier Menschenwürde vollständig eingetreten: werden wir nun am Ziele unsres tätigen Strebens angelangt sein? Nein! Nun soll es erst recht beginnen! Sind wir durch die gesetzkräftige Lösung der letzten Emanzipationsfrage zur vollkommenen Wiedergeburt der menschlichen Gesellschaft gelangt, geht aus ihr ein freies, allseitig zu voller Tätigkeit erzogenes neues Geschlecht hervor, so haben wir nun erst die Kräfte gewonnen, an die höchsten Aufgaben der Zivilisation zu schreiten, das ist: Betätigung, Verbreitung derselben.
Nun wollen wir in Schiffen über das Meer fahren, da und dort ein junges Deutschland gründen, es mit den Ergebnissen unsres Ringens und Strebens befruchten, die edelsten, gottähnlichsten Kinder zeugen und erziehen: wir wollen es besser machen als die Spanier, denen die neue Welt ein pfäffisches Schlächterhaus, anders als die Engländer, denen sie ein Krämerkasten wurde. Wir wollen es deutsch und herrlich machen: vom Aufgang bis zum Niedergang soll die Sonne ein schönes, freies Deutschland sehen und an den Grenzen der Tochterlande soll, wie an denen des Mutterlandes, kein zertretenes unfreies Volk wohnen, die Strahlen deutscher Freiheit und deutscher Milde sollen den Kosaken und Franzosen, den Buschmann und Chinesen erwärmen und verklären. Seht ihr, hier hat unser republikanisches Streben kein Ziel und Ende, rastlos dringt es weiter von Jahrhundert zu Jahrhundert zur Beglückung des ganzen großen Menschengeschlechtes! Ist dies ein Traum, ein Utopien?
Fatherland Union Paper: quoted from Richard Wagner Dichtungen und Schriften. Edited by Dieter Borchmeyer. Band 5, Insel Verlag, 1983. Page 215-216 (paragraph breaks changed to make them consistent with Praeger). Emphasis in original text.Praeger takes some arguably necessary liberties and avoids translating the Urtext too literally, but in doing so he remains far more faithful to its meaning than the translator for the version quoted by Sir Richard J. Evans.
I have added selective original German phrases to Praeger's translation in square parentheses so that readers can use Google translator or any English-German dictionary to look up keywords for themselves. Of particular note is that in the Urtext there is nothing that even remotely reads like "we will do it in a wonderful, German way". Also of concern is the way the words "ein junges Deutschland" (a young Germany) has been translated to just "a new Germany". While "jung" can mean "new", it actually means "young", and in this case, Wagner is making a reference to the liberal "Young Germany" movement:
YOUNG GERMANY. The name given to a group of German writers, of whom Heine was the most famous, which in the third decade of the nineteenth century initiated a revolt against the prevailing spirit of romanticism in the national literature, which had resulted in a total separation of literature from the actualities of life. Against the dominant spirit of absolutism in politics and obscurantism in religion the writers of this school maintained the principles of democracy, socialism, and rationalism. Among many things they advocated the separation of Church and State, the emancipation of the Jews, and the raising of the political and social position of women. In 1835 the Federal Diet issued a decree forbidding the publication of the works of Heine, Gutzkow, Laube, Mundt, and Wienbarg.
The New International Encyclopædia, 1905 edition.
The definition given for this movement by a pre-world war encyclopædia is an excellent one, which is mercifully unbiased by the sort of politicised revisionist view asserting that all German nationalist movements had always proto-Nazi, as became common post-war. It should be noted that Wagner was personally acquainted with Heine and Laube. Heine, and another key member of the Young Germany movement, Ludwig Börne, are both admiringly mentioned in Wagner's Judaism in Music. Both Börne and Heine were ethnically Jewish by birth although they identified by personal choice as German and Christian. Wagner's relationship with Heinrich Laube is detailed in Praeger:
It was an odd freak of fortune that almost immediately after Wagner had settled in Paris, he should, by accident, meet in the streets an old friend from Leipzic, Heinrich Laube. It was in a paper edited by Laube that Richard Wagner's first printed article on the non-existence of German opera had appeared. That was when Wagner was about one and twenty. Laube was a political revolutionist who underwent several terms of imprisonment for daring to utter his thoughts about Germany and its government through his paper. But prison confinement never controlled the dauntless courage of the patriot. He was a man of considerable and varied gifts. It is not only as a political demagogue that he will be known in future times, but as a philosopher, novelist, and playwright. In Leipzic he had shown himself very friendly to Wagner, whose sound, vigorous judgment attracted him, and now after hearing of Wagner's precarious situation, offered to introduce him to Heine. Such an opportunity could not be lost, and so the cultured Hebrew poet and Richard Wagner met.
Praeger: Wagner as I Knew Him
Paris had become a common place for German revolutionaries in exile to congregate, Laube among them. Other guests to Heinrich Heine's house in Paris, apart from Richard Wagner, included Karl Marx. Had it not been for the fact that Marx was forced to move to Belgium after Berlin started to object to the growing number of revolutionaries congregating in Paris, Marx and Wagner may have even crossed paths in Paris since they both moved in similar revolutionary circles.
Note, in particular, the way Praeger describes Laube in liberal nationalistic terms as being a true "patriot" for his revolutionary activities. That is typical of the nineteenth-century left-wing nationalism of the Young Germany movement. It goes to emphasise the fact that in the nineteenth century, nationalism had been more of a liberal movement, one that sought to sweep away ancient regimes in favour of democratic republicanism. At the time of the 1848 revolution, even Pan-German unification movements seeking to remove the ancient regimes of the Kingdoms of Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire ruled by the Habsburgs were still liberal and pro-democratic.
Only later on did right-wing German nationalism emerge, first with the unification of Germany under Prussian domination after the Franco-Prussian war. This was only the Kleindeutschland, small German solution unifying only the kingdoms of Prussia, Saxony, and Bavaria, but excluding Austria. Next Pan-Germanic unification (the Grossdeutschland, grand German solution) was only achieved by the Austrian-born Hitler after the annexation of Austria into the Dritte Reich. As a result, the false assumption is made that all German nationalisms had always been right-wing, imperialist, and proto-Nazi (with Wagner being painted as history's original Hun), but, at its outset, it had been far from the case.
It is often asserted that after the failure of the 1848 revolutions, Richard Wagner turned his back on liberalism, and started to support the change in German nationalism into a right-wing militarist movement. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Wagner remained a staunch pacifist who openly denounced Prussian militarism and Pan-Germanism. After German unification in 1870, Wagner started to turn his back almost entirely on all forms of German national unification "under the pointy tip of the Prussian sabre", and became a supporter of Constantin Frantz with his model of European federalism in which independent European nation states would be united by a European constitution based on the American constitution. It is essentially a prototype for the European Union today.
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