Klarinet Archive - Posting 000004.txt from 1998/10

From: "Edwin V. Lacy" <el2@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: [kl] Wagner
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1998 12:24:28 -0400

On Wed, 30 Sep 1998, Neil Leupold wrote:

> On Wed, 30 Sep 1998, Edwin V. Lacy wrote:
>
> > Unfortunately, I was also thinking of the fact that Wagner was
> > very much a champion of Hitler, and Hitler returned that high
> > esteem to Wagner. It is known that Hitler also had trod those
> > same rooms.
>
> Not during Wagner's lifetime he didn't. I'm very confused by the above
> statements.

Wow! Upon reading the message which I hurriedly wrote after a long,
difficult day of teaching and rehearsing, I'm confused by it, also.

Hitler did visit Wahnfried on numerous occasions, but it was Wagner's son,
Siegfried or other members of Wagner's family who lived there at that
time. There is quite a bit of material about the relationship between
Hitler and the ideas of Wagner in William L. Shirer's book, "The Rise and
Fall of the Third Reich." Here is an excerpt, in which Shirer quotes
Hitler:

"I remember my emotion the first time I entered Wahnfried. To say I was
moved is an understatement! [Now he is speaking of the members of
Wagner's family.] At my worst moments, they never ceased to sustain me,
even Siegfried Wagner. I was on Christian-name terms with them. I loved
them all, and I also love Wahnfried. The ten days of the Bayreuth season
were always one of the blessed seasons of my existence."

There is also much about this in John Toland's biography of Hitler:

[Speaking of events of 1923] "It came in Bayreuth at the Villa Wahnfried,
Wagner's home, where he was paying homage to Cosima, the
eighty-six-year-old widow of the master. Winifred Wagner, the English
wife of Wagner's son Siegfried, was already entranced by Hitler and his
movement. ....... Ill at ease, Hitler walked shyly, awkwardly around the
music room and the library, tiptoeing as if he were in a cathedral."

[Later:] "Late in July 1933 Hitler took time off to make another
pilgrimage to Bayreuth. He laid wreaths on the graves of Richard and
Cosima Wagner and their son Siegfried. He also attended the annual
festival. It was the first time he had seen the Wagner family since
becoming Chancellor and he wandered around the library at Wahnfried with
undisguised satisfaction."

There is voluminous material available about how Hitler was influenced by
the ideas of Wagner. It would make a good topic for a book or a doctoral
dissertation in music history.

I apologize for having posted a possibly misleading message without
sufficiently proofreading it first.

Ed Lacy
el2@-----.edu

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