The Darker Side of Genius: Richard Wagner’s Anti-Semitism

by Jacob Katz

For some, Richard Wagner is infamous as the favorite composer of Hitler, who seems to have admired Wagner as an early exponent of his own racist ideology and worldview. Impressed by this assumption victims of Hitler have also associated Wagner and his music with Nazism to such an extent that in Israel a ban on public performance of that music is upheld to this day. Jacob Katz, a scholar of international repute, approaches the highly charged issue of Richard Wagner’s anti-Semitism with the tools of a critical historian, asking two central What role did anti-Semitism play in the life and work of Richard Wagner? And how did his anti-Jewish thoughts and sentiments contribute to the development of political anti-Semitism and Nazism? In this first comprehensive and judicious treatment of Wagner’s anti-Semitism, Katz analyzes the composer’s attitudes in their own time and place and in the context of Wagner’s life and aspirations. He traces Wagner’s feelings toward Jews chronologically, showing that the composer was ultimately obsessed by a deep-seated Judeophobia generated by conflict with his Jewish mentors and competitors. But he argues against reading the later emergence of Nazism back into Wagner’s life and work. While not absolving Wagner from responsibility for his views, Katz contends that contemporary Jews have paradoxically and uncritically adopted the Nazis’ assumptions about Wagner. Katz argues that Wagner’s music is untainted by his anti-Semitism, that there is, in fact, very little in Wagner’s art that, without forced speculation, can be related to his racist views.

Genres: Music

172 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1986

Reviews

[Douglas Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this initially to research Kanye West's recent turn towards Hitler and the Nazis, as West mentioned that he was the "most revolutionary musician since Richard Wagner". While I was aware that Wagner was a Schopenhauer fan, a Nietzsche collaborator and related to Houston Stewart Chamberlain, I was not aware that the proto-Nazi movement in Germany was heavily influenced by this famed composer himself.

Katz carefully dissects Wagner from his statements, not his music, and traces a long and developing thought of his anti-semitism, from before his infamous "Judaism in Music" polemic in 1850, to its republication under his name in 1869, and the reactions to the burgeoning movement after the economic crash of 1873 jumpstarted a different sort of anti-semitic movement in Germany, one that was created on a racial basis of the Jewish diaspora, rather than merely a religious one that had been the base for two millennia prior.

Racial anti-semitism in 19th century Germany were shaped by events (Napoleonic Wars, the 1848 Revolutions, Franco-Prussian War and the ensuing depression) and philosophers, (from even to Fichte and Marx). As I have been studying the Nazis from every angle trying to understand their ideology completely to defeat them, this book has invaluable insights towards that end.

Curiously, Nietzsche is only mentioned at a surface level, even though it is well documented that they were very close for a period and collaborate on many projects together. Given that this was written in 1985 (a few years after the Lebanon War), it seems interesting that they would exclude such an important figure in Wagner's life, given his own views of the Jews.

[Jalkukda · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just been listening to Richard wagner's music and loving some of it, just realized he was a francophobe and an Anti-semite and Hitler's favorite composer. What the actual fuck man ? how could one be so many terrible things at once ? and still compose generous music, I don't know what to do anymore.