Customer Reviews

Wagner's Hitler: The Prophet and His Disciple

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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

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".

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.

First off, one thing should be absolutely clear to anyone contemplating actually reading this book: the jury is in on Joachim Köhler's credentials as a scholar: he has none. Ian Kershaw, author of the standard biography on Hitler, dismisses this freewheeling journalist in a footnote with a shrug of his shoulders. Richard J. Evans, another of today's foremost authorities on the Third Reich, is similarly dismissive in a review, noting how 'phrases and quotations are time and again ripped from their context in the writings or sayings of Hitler and Wagner and made to look as if they are saying the same thing. None of this is remotely persuasive.' Scholars of Wagner are usually a bit more timorous, as they are always afraid of being accused of 'defending' the 'Meister,' yet they too well know that Köhler is not a scholar, but an amateur writer of fictitious history.

It has often been noted that the enduring obsession with Hitler and his Nazi Empire has something rather obscene about it. This book is a perfect example of that. And just as there will always be an audience for shoddy documentaries about Nazi magic, the UFOs of the SS, or Hitler's escape to Brazil in 1947, so there will apparently always be publishers for this type of masturbatory fantasies. It's an attempt to rewrite history--not because Herr Köhler himself has any type of ideological agenda that he wants to push, but because he wants to make money.

It should be clear as well that to point this out is not in any way to deny that Hitler's fascination with Wagner deserves closer scrutiny. Rather the opposite: since the subject is indeed an important one, if also very difficult as Hitler in fact didn't say all that much about his favorite composer, it requires a kind of sensitive analysis that Köhler is neither competent nor willing to provide.

It is rather amusing that some of the reviewers here seem to have been taken in with Köhler's extensive footnotes and bibliography, as if that were enough to ensure a high scholarly standard. But all too often, these footnotes do not refer to what Köhler suggests they are referring to. For instance, the author seeks to bolster his claim that Dietrich Eckart was a 'Wagnerian' by a reference to Margarete Plewnia's study 'Auf dem Weg zu Hitler: Der völkishce Publizist Dietrich Eckart.' Yet Plewnia does not mention Wagner *once* in her book, and the simple fact is that Eckart was not particularly fond of Wagner's music, and certainly not a student of his prose writings (few people ever have been--as Richard J. Evans has noted, there is not even any solid evidence that Hitler ever read these texts).

Sad to see that the translator Ronald Taylor--himself the author of a few decent biographies--has been so infected by Köhler's method of 'scholarship' that he even seeks to emulate him in the preface. He writes: "The great cry of 'wach auf!'--'Awake!'--that goes up in the final scene of Die Meistersinger found an echo in the Nazi challenge of 'Germany Awake!'" Note how Taylor provides the German for 'wach auf!,' but not for 'Germany awake!' The reason for this is simple: whereas in English, we have 'awake' in both cases, the Nazi slogan was 'Deutschland, Erwache!'--which is of course less of an 'echo' of 'wach auf.' In addition, both Taylor and Köhler are obviously trying to insinuate that the slogan derived from Wagner, which it didn't. It came from a poem by Dietrich Eckart ('Sturm, Sturm, Sturm'), which had nothing whatsoever to do with the composer. To assume that either Köhler or Taylor was not aware of this would strain credulity beyond breaking point. But they write it nonetheless.

Finally, it may be noted that though the quote from the New York Times appearing under the section 'Editorial Reviews' on the Amazon page for this book is accurate, it is not from a review for 'Wagner's Hitler,' but from an article about Daniel Barenboim.

This book is excellent. It lacks the information that Richard Wagner was a SS member and a fanatic nazy party member. After the war he escaped from Nuremberg trials to Paraguay, where he composed his last opera "Parifal". All the other information in this book is absolutely correct and real.

The methodology by which Köhler "proves" that Hitler was little more than Wagner's disciple really owes everything to the Nazi propaganda machine: it is purely emotively based. He produces not a shred of evidence to substantiate their position. As such, Koehler, whether deliberately or inadvertently, becomes little more than a boot licking apologist for the monstrous distortions of Wagner generated by the Nazi propaganda machinery in order to falsely appropriate him as one of their own. One simply has to ask questions as to what moves Koehler to be so obsessed with proving the Eternal Truth of such propaganda. In doing so, he deliberately and systematically runs rough shod over all evidence to the contrary. As such it is impossible to counter his emotive claims, because all possibility of rational arguments based on evidence have been thrown out of the window. That is how propaganda erects its so-called Eternal Truths. With the sort of McCarthian methodology Koehler uses, you could set anyone up one pleases as a card carrying Nazi.

Here, for example, are some key Wagner quotations that make monstrous and perverse liars of both Köhler, as well as his beloved Nazi interpretations of Wagner to which he religiously adheres. This comes from Wagner's Fatherland Union Paper (translation taken from Wagner as I knew him's book):

"And when all who draw breath in our dear German land are united into one great free people, when class prejudices shall have ceased to exist, then do you suppose we have reached our goal? Oh, no; we are just equipped for the beginning. Then will it be our duty to investigate boldly ... the cause of misery of our present social status, and determine whether man ... can have been destined by God to be the servile slave of inert base metal. We must decide whether money shall exert such degrading power over the image of God -- man -- as to render him the despicable slave of the passions of usury and avarice. The war against this existing evil will cause neither tears nor blood."

"The sun of German freedom and German gentleness shall alike warm and elevate Cossack, Frenchmen, Bushmen, and Chinese."

"Let us be children of one Father, brothers of one family."

"We further insist upon the unconditional right of every natural-born subject, when of age, to a vote . . . "

"Therefore let us abolish monarchy altogether as autocracy, i.e. sole-reigning, becomes impossible by the strong opposition of democracy, -- the reign of the many..."

"If Prussia insists on monarchy, it is to suit its notion of Prussian destiny, a vain idea that cannot fail to pale soon."

These convictions are further confirmed in Wagner's late writings. For example, Wagner says of Gobineau's racist ideology that it is a "completely immoral world-order" (eine schlechtin unmoralische Weltordnung). Furthermore, Wagner welcomes the likelihood that in the future all races will become the same through intermixing ("die mögliche Gleichheit aller durch ihre Vermischung sich änhlich gewordener Rassen"). A later appendage to his Judaism in Music even explained that it was a call for a fuller integration of Jews into society - for the benefit both of Jews as well as Germans, but this too is deliberately and systematically overlooked.

Wagner suffered 12 years in exile as a liberal dissident for expressing his egalitarian and pro-democratic ideals. No other major composer in the history of music has ever been as prosecuted for standing up so firmly in the name of democracy, and equal rights for all. Indeed, had Wagner been captured, he would have certainly faced the death sentence for it. Everything in his writing confirm that he remained steadfast in these ideals throughout his life. Sadly, Wagner the liberal dissident remains firmly in exile. It is truly one of the biggest injustices in musicological history that one of the great liberal idealists has been so successfully perverted by the Nazis and their latter day apologists into one of their own propagandists. Even the Israeli author of the book The Ring of Myths: The Israelis, Wagner and the Nazis concludes that endorsement of horrifying Nazi distortions about Wagner merely acts as boot licking homage and apologia for their monstrous ideology, rather than exposing them for the pernicious liars they are. It is high time that Wagner the liberal dissident is set free and that the Nazis are fully thwarted in their attempts to plunder the riches of German culture by misappropriating it for their perverse propagandist ends. Unfortunately, propaganda works - by appealing to base emotion. This, Köhler does so extremely well, that one is left wondering what his real motivation are.

On the other hand, fortunately, Köhler is so fanatically extreme in his McCarthian zealousness to railroad Wagner that he only undermines his own case in the eyes of anyone willing to dispassionately examine the evidence in full. In that sense alone, books like this should be heartily welcomed.

I read this together with Magee's recent The Tristan Chord and the two together create a funny dissonance, if not a blown gasket, but the twice over left a few question marks next to Kohler's book. This does not subtract from the book's remarkable interest and I would recommend Wagner defenders 'face the music' here to the extent of at least not ignoring it. Wagner wasn't your garden variety shmuck.
However, I felt as if I were left hanging by a text that was poorly documented, and found myself suddenly distanced from the text with some of the speculative takes cut into the footage. No footnotes, no deal, and the question is on hold since tracking down this data is not an afternoon's work. That's a pity since I doubt if this objection will deflect the author's basic point. The interleaving of Hitler bits with Wagner bits was confusing also, better to have simply laid out the sequence. Then it might be clearer that, while Wagner probably cannot be easily absolved here, it is also doubtful if we can establish a full or correct chain of consequence. Finally, blaming all this on the Romantic movement doesn't quite wash, and the fact is, as the Magee book shows, that we are dealing with a very complex figure in Wagner (as Nietzsche well knew)and a very tangled social question involving the sources of fascism in the rightist reaction of the nineteenth century. Indeed, it is sad to see the hothead of 1848 turning into the cultural derelict pursuing the 'aesthetic state', with such a bone crushing opposite result. Important, but sad book. Needs further commentary, however, with some historical backup.

There are few people in this world who were more obsessed with Richard Wagner than Adolf Hitler. A good view of Hitler as a young man is presented in the book written by his most important childhood friend, August Kubizek The Young Hitler I Knew. They met at the Opera House in Linz.

It is really ludicrous that some reviewers here seem to deny the connection between Hitler and Wagner. Some facts are in order.

Wagner was more than one man. He and his brilliant wife Cosima built a business and political machine. It was Wagner who was the most important sponsor and promoter of Arthur Gobineau, the founder of intellectual racism in Europe. He's one of the people from whom Hitler got his ideas about race. The Wagner family then promoted Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the leading philosopher of racism in the Kaiser's Germany. In 1923 Hitler would meet Chamberlain when he was welcomed to Haus Wahnfried, the Wagner home in Bayreuth. Chamberlain would then endorse Hitler as the future savior of Germany. The entire Wagner machine would then be set in motion to promote Hitler. Details of this are in the book.

I have a list of German history books on my Amazon profile page that give more information on the connection between Wagner and Hitler.

Did Hitler and Wagner agree on all points? No. Few people in history do. However, the romantic visions of Wagner were of overwhelming power in inspiring Hitler and driving him forward.

In Wagner's Hitler: The Prophet And His Disciple, Joachim Kohler, scholar of philosophy and German literature, persuasively argues that Wagner's influences played a vital role in shaping the cultural context in which Nazism developed. Kohler begins by tracing the legacy of the German romantic tradition and the irrational, egocentric, nationalistic, and intolerantly utopian features which Wagner and Adolph Hitler shared. Kohler goes on to trace Wagner's influence on Hitler from his days as a young and failed Austrian artist, to his triumphant days as dictator enacting megalomanic Wagnerian visions of a Germany that would rule the world. Also shown is how Wagner's family in Bayreuth supported Hitler from the beginning of his political career, and aided his introduction into highly influential social and political circles. Wagner's Hitler is insightful, provocative, engaging, challenging, and at times controversial, but always fascinating reading and recommended for students of Germany history in general, and the Nazis influences on German culture in particular.

The controversy still rages over the relationship of Wagner's music and writings to Hitler's conception of the Third Reich. It usually comes down to two camps: a. Those who cannot listen to Wagner if he was an inspiration to Hitler, an anti-semitic or both. So, they spend their time ignoring or downplaying any evidence of these "facts." b. Others do not see an problem if the music influenced Hitler philosophy or if Wagner was an anti-semitic in relation to enjoying the music. They can interphet the mythology to exclude anti-semitic interphetation.
And there are anti-semitics and Nazi in the world today.
This book is over 300 pages without footnotes. His arguement is proven in various degrees by a number of sources. But, overall the theory is solid. I can't see how others would think this is not so since the writings of Hitler, Chamberlain, Wagner and others clearly show the relatioship between these three men and others. A relationship based on an anti-semitic mythology.
Read all these reviews, but still read the work on your own.
Then do a web search for additional information.