Wagner's Hitler: The Prophet and His Disciple [Paperback]

Joachim Kohler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 5, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0745627102 | ISBN-13: 978-0745627106

Wagner's Hitler is an important and controversial contribution to the literature on Hitler's Germany.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Fascinating and very well written ... clearly the best documented of the attempts to link Wagner and Hitler." Harold James, Princeton University

"Chilling and exhaustively researched ... [it offers a] persuasive case for its thesis that Hitler based his entire philosophy and the whole Nazi apparatus on ideas explicitly drawn from Wagner's writings and operas." The New York Times

'Time and again Wagner called for the annihilation of the Jewish race, an alien body in an Aryan German state. Hitler took him at his word.' Ronald Taylor, in his Introduction

Review

"Fascinating and very well written ... clearly the best documented of the attempts to link Wagner and Hitler." Harold James, Princeton University

"Chilling and exhaustively researched ... [it offers a] persuasive case for its thesis that Hitler based his entire philosophy and the whole Nazi apparatus on ideas explicitly drawn from Wagner's writings and operas." The New York Times

'Time and again Wagner called for the annihilation of the Jewish race, an alien body in an Aryan German state. Hitler took him at his word.' Ronald Taylor, in his Introduction

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Polity (December 5, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0745627102
• ISBN-13: 978-0745627106
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,309,951 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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73 of 80 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The absense of evidence proves the depths of the conspiracy, February 5, 2002

By 

Laon (moon-lit Surry Hills) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wagner's Hitler: The Prophet and His Disciple (Hardcover)

Joachim Köhler argues that Adolf Hitler was merely a puppet of dead composer Richard Wagner. The destruction of democracy, the German conquest of most of Europe in pursuit of a dream of world domination, the mass murders of European Jews, the whole Third Reich: all Wagner's idea.

Really? Let's see. Overthrow of democracy? Wagner supported constitutional monarchy, with political parties of "men with equal rights"; the monarch to stay above politics and ensure stability. His essay _State and religion_ is clear enough.

German conquest of Europe, and world domination? Wagner's _What is German?_ specifically condemns German attempts at military conquest, saying that German culture and polity never prospers when Germans rule other peoples.

The Holocaust? Wagner's most antisemitic essay, _Jewishness in Music_, calls on German Jews to abandon their separate culture and assimilate into German culture. That's racist, but did it influence Hitler? Since Hitler preferred racial segregation followed by extermination, it would seem not. Nor could Hitler have been comfortable with Wagner's opposition to the rule of one "race" by another, nor his suggestion that Europeans get used to racial intermingling (_Heroism and Christianity_). Meantime Köhler ignores the mainstream antisemites of Wagner's day, who really did influence Nazi racial policies.

(Wagner privately made some loathsome antisemitic remarks to Cosima Wagner, who duly recorded them in her diaries for Köhler to make the most of. But they weren't published till after Hitler's death, and for other reasons can't have been an influence.)

Look up "Wagner" in the indexes of Hitler's books and speeches, and accounts of his conversation by Speer and other eyewitnesses, and you find, despite Köhler's picture of an "obsessed" Hitler, that Hitler hardly ever mentioned Wagner. Köhler even admits this, but claims - seriously - that it's part of a conspiracy to hide Wagner's posthumous puppet-mastery. But Hitler never once referred to Wagner's ideas or essays, only to music. Hitler didn't even find Wagner's antisemitism interesting or important enough to mention.

It's clear that Wagner's influence on Hitler is essentially the same, that is, emotionally intense with without intellectual content, as his influence on Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism. Both men were passionate Wagnerians. Herzl loved Wagner's music, regularly attending Wagner operas and concerts for inspiration and renewal while he wrote Zionism's founding texts. But that doesn't make Wagner the founder of Israel. Hitler likewise loved the music but showed little interest in Wagner's ideas.

Köhler deals with these intractable realities in five ways:

1 Make stuff up
Here's Köhler describing Hitler in the bunker, 1945: "As the outside world disintegrated, it was to his inner world ... that Hitler turned ... Like a film projected onto the screen of his consciousness, he was suddenly gripped by a vision". Köhler then describes Hitler's "vision", which turns out to be about Wagner and to support Köhler's thesis. But no source mentions this "vision". Köhler seems to have invented it because the historical record wouldn't give him what he needed. There are many other examples.

2 Footnote fakery
Though the book is festooned with footnotes, they only add credibility if you don't look them up. For example that "vision" passage is footnoted, but follow it up and you won't find a source. Instead it says that an irrelevant phrase Köhler threw into the passage echoes words Hitler used in 1936. Soon after, Köhler describes a 1944 meeting between Hitler and Wagner's grandson Wieland, with Hitler dismissing Wieland's claim to Wagner's manuscript scores "over supper". Follow up the footnote and you find that no meeting took place. A little further Köhler alleges that Hitler's words "The people will not tolerate any act of clemency", in relation to the murders after the Reichstag fire, are "taken almost literally from _Rienzi_". The footnote directs you, rather vaguely, to Act II, which I have just checked in vain for those words or anything like them. And so on.

3 Twisting words
Köhler's quotes from Wagner tend to give only two to perhaps ten words at a time, wrenched from context and ascribed sinister meanings. Thus Köhler describes Hitler's "orgies of killings in dark, secret places ... `in the bosom of darkness and death', as Wagner once put it." But check "in the bosom of darkness and death" back to the source and you nothing whatsoever to do with "orgies of killing": Wagner meant "caves". This is no occasional slip-up; it is systematic. Almost all Köhler's Wagner quotes are twisted in this way.

4 Irrelevancy
Köhler's deceptiveness on that non-meeting between Wieland and Hitler is odd, because Wagner's grandson's access or non-access to Hitler in 1944 is irrelevant. Some of Wagner's descendants and their partners supported the Nazis, some went along, and some defied them. Köhler spends much of the book showing that some Wagner descendants were contemptible, but the Wagner Köhler wants to arraign was then long dead and gone.

5 The big lie
Sometimes Köhler just lets rip, and it's breath-taking. Try this, about the _Ring_: "The gods in Valhalla had ordained that the destruction of their `deadly enemy' must precede the age of the `master race'." That would certainly be damning, if true, but instead it's bizarre nonsense. Other claims, especially about the operas, are similarly fantastic.

There's much more, shonky chronology, dodgy sources, etc, but I'm out of space. Of course there's much to condemn about Wagner, but that's no excuse for fabrication. This is a bad book, partly for untruth concerning a flawed man, mainly for its evasion of the actual historical persons and forces that led to Nazism, the Holocaust and attendant horrors. Neither the far-right political parties, unions and associations, nor the antisemitic Christian right groups, nor the opportunistic business backers, nor the street thugs behind Nazism and neo-Nazism cared then, nor care now, a hoot about opera.

Misdirection like Köhler's not only tries to cede to Nazis a cultural treasure that they do not deserve, but by obscuring the actual historical origins of Nazism it gives comfort to those who deserve none.

Cheers!

Laon

42 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Wagner-Hitler Connection, April 1, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Wagner's Hitler: The Prophet and His Disciple (Hardcover)

Overall,I found Herr Kohler's book quite interesting. The workwas well researched and the "connection" between thesubjects certainly established. The Wagner-Hitler relation to history has been expounded upon in many works but I don't know of any complete volume other than this one, so I would call this the definative work on the subject. Kohler as a writer can be a bit emotional at times as he makes his case. I don't agree that Wagner can be "blamed" for the atrocities committed 50-60 years after his death(he died in 1883-Hitler came to power in 1933). No doubt, Wagner had a tremendous influence on Hitler, especially when he was a lonely youth in Linz and Vienna Austria in the early 1900's. It is interesting to me that Hitler's favorite opera was "Rienzi", a work of Wagner's that is rarely shown today, hardly touched upon in studies of his operas, and extremely in tradition of grand opera. Wagner composed this opera with the "guidance" or should I say the "influence" of the Jewish composer Giacommo Meyerbeer. It has even been suggested Wagner copied certain styles of Meyerbeer's when writing the music for this piece. Knowing what I know about Wagner and the contradictory nature of his personality, his witty although sometimes assinine prose writings, and certain facts concerning his life, there is more of a Wagner-Jewish connection than that with Hitler. Wagner envied the Jews and secretly deferred to them. To be sure, Wagner attacked them in the press and in his essay "Judaism in Music" but all his life he continued to associate with Jews and in his final years most of his retinue at Wahnfried consisted of Jews like the set painter Paul von Joukovsky and his "Parsifal" conductor Hermann Levi. His former favorite conductor Hans von Bulow stated that in order to be successful at Bayreuth it was necessary to be circumcised. Wagner had evidentally refused to sign an anti-semitic petition presented to him which Bulow had signed, much to his embarrassment. Many forget that Hitler had another favorite musician in the composer Anton Bruckner. He spoke mostly about the music of Rienzi or Bruckner, not about the 'ideas' of Wagner. "Parsifal" was not a favorite and was actually banned during the Third Reich. The quote from Hitler that "from 'Parsifal'I shall make my religion" comes from Hermann Rauschning's "Hitler Speaks" a dubious book of which it's authenticity has certainly been questioned. The Nazis themselves were not enthusiastic about Wagner either. They tolerated Bayreuth but for Hitler. You can "read" the Third Reich in the "Ring of the Nibelung" with it's Nordic heroism,the Aryan 'savior'Siegfried, the lust for power and final cataclysmic destruction, but for all that, Wagner shouldn't be made responsible for Hitler, any more than the Beatles can be held accountable for Charles Manson. There is also no proof that Hitler ever read any of Wagner's prose works(I don't think Hitler read a book cover to cover in his life. He read only to confirm his own outlook on the world. Most of his reading consisted of newspapers and periodical scribblings)which contain all of his ideas on art,race,and humanity that can be contradicted in his thousands of letters as well as by his life's actions upheld by the people who knew him. I believe the only writing of Wagner's Hitler read was the scores to the operas which he did seem to know pretty well, as many of his secretaries and associates confirm. The book is fascinating but the reader should bear in mind that it is only another interpretation of a very contraversial and contradictory "connection".

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars WAGNER PREDICTED THE NAZI DEFEAT, July 16, 2007

By 

Edward R. Strelow (san jacinto, ca United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wagner's Hitler: The Prophet and His Disciple (Paperback)

The Wagner/Nazi connection has been around for a long time now. and I just don't think there is much direct linkage there. Wagner himself was long dead before Hitler even showed up and cannot be judged by the acts of his family and followers. The most prominent later Wagner family member who was definitely a Nazi sympathizer was Winifred Wagner, and she was British.

Certainly Wagner and the Germans of Wagner's day were seriously antisemitic, but then so were British, Americans, Poles, Russians etc. While he objected to Jewishness in theory, Wagner worked with Jews throughout his life and in many other respects had advanced liberal views. He was a great German composer obviously loved by Germans, not to mention many other nationalities, including that bastion of liberal progressivism George Bernard Shaw.

I struck by the failure of many to realize that far from glorifying war and conquest, Wagner was quite the other way. His major work, the Ring of the Nibelung is a story of the downfall of the gods who seek to consolidate power in their Valhalla fortress. It and they are destroyed at the end of the Ring. So if the Nazis had realy been paying attention they should have been very nervous about what Wagner was saying.

The Nazi's even named their major defence line, the Siegfried line, however, Siegfried is destroyed in the last opera after being misled into betraying his "wife" Brunhilde, so why did the Nazis want to make him a talisman of security?

I think they were blinded by the stirring militaristic music which appears in sections of the opera, and ignored the overall stories.

There is a book crying out to be written about how the Nazi's blinded themselves to the obvious messages in Wagner's work esepcially about the arrogance of power. These were not just incidental matters in his work, but his main story themes and should have acted as a warning and given them pause.