The Wagner Clan: The Saga of Germany's Most Illustrious and Infamous Family [Hardcover]

Jonathan Carr (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 21, 2007

A family saga as riveting as any opera, and a matchless mirror of Germany’s rise, fall, and resurrection. Richard Wagner was many things—composer, philosopher, philanderer, failed revolutionary, and virulent anti-Semite—and his descendants have carried on his complex legacy. Now, in The Wagner Clan, biographer Jonathan Carr retraces the path of the renowned composer and his descendants. Along the way, Carr offers glimpses of Franz Liszt (whose illegitimate daughter Cosima married Wagner); Friedrich Nietzsche; Arthur Schopenhauer; Alberto Toscanini; Joseph Goebbels; Hermann Göring; and the “Wolf” himself, Adolf Hitler, a passionate fan of the Master’s music and an adopted uncle to Wagner’s grandchildren. Wagner’s British-born daughter-in-law, Winifred, was a close friend of Hitler’s and seemed momentarily positioned to marry him after the death of her husband. All through the war the Bayreuth Festival, begun by the Master himself, was supported by Hitler, who had to fill out the meager audience with fighting men and SS officers. After the war, the festival was dark for a decade until Wagner’s offspring—with characteristic ambition and cunning—revived it.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The grandiose life of Richard Wagner—the pronouncements on art and the German soul, the petty groveling for money and favors, the intermittently atrocious politics and intermittently glorious music—was a tough act to follow. Carr (Mahler: A Biography) follows Wagner's descendants through three generations as they fight each other for control of the Bayreuth Festival and, at opportune times, embrace, reject or sweep under the rug their forebear's status as Nazism's spiritual godfather. (It's a bum rap, Carr concludes, after a nuanced analysis of Wagner's writings and music that finds his anti-Semitism vile but muddled and probably not eliminationist.) Much of the story belongs to outsiders who married into the family: Wagner's wife, Cosima, a chillingly implacable anti-Semite; his son-in-law Houston Chamberlain, a racist ideologue revered by the Nazis; and his daughter-in-law Winifred, who clasped Hitler—affectionately dubbed Uncle Wolf by her children—to the family's bosom. Carr's sprightly, fluent narrative places the family in its historical and intellectual context without reducing it to the symbolic effigy it has often become. Photos. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press (December 21, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871139758
• ISBN-13: 978-0871139757
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,191,960 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #31 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( W ) > Wagner, Richard

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reads like "The Godfather", January 25, 2009

By 

Peter Dallos "DonPedro1492" (NY, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Wagner Clan: The Saga of Germany's Most Illustrious and Infamous Family (Paperback)

This is an extraordinary book that reads like a saga from the pages of The Godfather. A revelation to anyone thrilled by the majestic, thrilling music of the Master, but also shocking because of the longstanding antisemitism of the Wagner clan, and the unsavory family dramas. One can understand why the Master's music still provokes anguish in Israel despite the soaring notes. As Thomas Mann famously put it: "There is much Hitler in Wagner."
The book is absorbing, well-researched, and reads like a thriller, documenting the backstage drama and unusual characters behind Bayreuth from the time of Wagner to the present. No wonder "The Economist" nominated it as one of the ten best books of 2007.

Two big thumbs up for Jonathan Carr's achievement!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fine study of the Wagner family, October 14, 2009

By 

William Podmore (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Wagner Clan: The Saga of Germany's Most Illustrious and Infamous Family (Paperback)

In this his last book, Jonathan Carr (1942-2008), the biographer of Helmut Schmidt and Gustav Mahler, has written a brilliant collective biography of the Wagner family. He tells the story of Richard Wagner's extraordinary music and of his family's fights over the ownership and control of the Bayreuth music festival.

Wagner backed the 1848 revolutions, but had failed to learn from the 1789 French Revolution which, as Carr points out, "gave a mighty boost to the cause of Jewish emancipation." Wagner's repellent anti-Semitism stains his fame.

Also, the Wagner family was closer to Hitler than any other German family was. They knew Hitler as `Uncle Wolf', so often did he visit their Bayreuth home. The family welcomed his patronage and never distanced themselves from his politics. Later, they showed no remorse and accepted no responsibility for Nazi crimes.

Carr concludes that Wagner was not `particularly to blame for the Holocaust', largely because there were so many other guilty parties. Nor was his music especially palatable to the Nazis, although they used his `Ride of the Valkyries' as sound track to newsreels of their air raids, as did Francis Ford Coppola to scenes of US helicopter attacks on Vietnam in `Apocalypse Now'.

Wagner's great opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen "shows how disaster strikes those spurred by greed and lust for power." Wagner's rebellious grand-daughter Friedelind later called Hitler `Alberich-Hitler', identifying him with the Ring's lethal Nibelung, whose hunger for power sparks the saga that ends in the apocalypse of Götterdämmerung.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Wagner clan-the saga of Germany's most illustious and infammous family, May 27, 2008

By 

J.E.S. "J.E S." (Glendale, Cal. USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wagner Clan: The Saga of Germany's Most Illustrious and Infamous Family (Hardcover)

Wonderful history of the Wagner family that would be enjoyed by music lovers and non-music lovers alike.