'From Richrad Wagner to Adolf Hitler. Varieties of a racist ideology'



Richard Wagner´s anti-Semitism has been highly controversial throughout the world for over 160 years. The assessments range from a humanitarian and emancipatory interpretation as invoked by Wagner's Jewish friends to morally exculpate him to a pronounced hostility to Jews to him being the immediate precursor to Hitler's racism. What would a sober examination reveal to be the case? This book is an attempt to filter out those elements which link Wagner's hostility to Jews with National Socialist racism, and above all it critically analyses the history of the impact of a nationalist racism, which in Bayreuth since Wagner´s death in 1883 until Hitler's seizure of power found numerous followers. Although Wagner, whose music Hitler enthusiastically celebrated until 1945, was a spiritual initiator of a racist ideology, the real link between Wagner and Hitler are the Wagnerians from Bayreuth, Cosima Wagner, Hans von Wolzogen, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Winifred Wagner, and many other Wagner fans who were more than mere artistic wingmen to National Socialism.