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Winifred Wagner

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The subtitle of this book is important - A Life at the Heart of Hitler's Bayreuth - for Winifred Wagner's institutionalised childhood, her youth with the ageing hippie Klindworth couple and the early years of her marriage to Siegfried are all raced through in around 50 pages (out of 500). Another mere 50 cover the 30 odd years after her de-nazification hearings and the takeover of the Bayreuth Festival by her two sons. The main bulk of this book concerns itself with the 25 years of her relationship with Hitler (and his with the Wagner family and the Festival) and its immediate aftermath.

That said, Brigitte Hamann provides a fascinating and eminently readable account of that relationship. Her attitude towards her subject seems to change as the book progresses. Initially she presents Winifred as a fervently (German) Nationalist, anti-Semitic character, much influenced by the writing and the presence around Wahnfried of her brother-in-law, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, even before she met and fell under the spell of Onkel Wolfi, as the family referred to Hitler. (Incidentally, Chamberlain was also English by birth but, like Winifred, became more German than the Germans.) The older Winifred is a rather different person as portrayed here. Throughout the war, as evidenced by many of the testaments taken from her de-nazification hearings, Winifred became some kind of Schindleresque saint, saving everyone she could from the clutches of her top Nazi friends - friends, acquaintances, friends of friends, people she didn't know at all, jews, gentiles, the lot. One suspects that all this is coloured by Winifred's own practical need for self-justification at those hearings and should be taken with a slightly larger pinch of salt than Hamann seems prepared to. One can accept that there was a certain naivety to Winifred that wouldn't allow her to accept either what was happening to these people or that her beloved Fuhrer had any knowledge of what was being done in his name. But her continued and oft-expressed loyalty to both Hitler and the principles of National Socialism throughout her later life would suggest that her opinions had not changed gthat much since her youth.

What comes clearly out of Hamann's narrative is a Hitler who found in the Wagner family and its mistress a privacy, a domesticity and a family life he so obviously needed and lacked elsewhere. Hamann remains remarkably tacit on whether the Adolf/Winifred relationship was ever consummated. One suspects not. What does come as a surprise, though, is how early in the War the relationship between them broke down. After all those secret midnight trysts in the 30's, it comes as a shock to realise that they didn't meet at all during the last four years of the War and that correspondence between them became more and more infrequent and formal.

Most of the other members of the Wagner family and many around the periphery come out of this book pretty badly. It seems as though there's something in the genes that drives Wagners to the bloodiest and most internecine of family wars. What is currently going on around the succession to possession of the Green Hill and all that goes with it appears to be little more than a re-run of what occurred towards the end of the war with the previous generation. Wieland emerges particularly badly. A spoiled kid determined to get his way and inclined to smash things if he didn't, he played the most political of games in securing the Festival for himself, conducting vicious and potentially lethal campaigns against the likes of Tietjen, Preetorius and even his own mother. And he was certainly the most duplicitous of all of them about his relationship with AH and the party. It transpires that he was actually second-in-command of a local concentration camp in the latter days of the War - something he would never admit to in later life. Wolfgang remains a much shadowier figure - perhaps because he was necessary to the writer for allowing access to the family archives, albeit still severely restricted and censored. Even Furtwangler turns out not have been quite the Parsifalian simpleton, devoted only to his art, that he and his supporters made him out to be after the Fall of Berlin. In fact, both before and after the War he was a dedicated schemer, determined to get the better of Toscanini, Tietjen and later the one he called the `K man', von Karajan, by whatever means it took.

So this book provides a good sprinkling of gossip as well as a fair amount of new material and information about a crucial and shaming period in Bayreuth's history, all meticulously researched and referenced. It also does us the service, like the film Downfall, of showing Hitler as a human being with human foibles and human insecurities rather than just as a mythical ogre - and that is what is so much more frightening.

This biography is for those with a deep interest in classical music history, Hitler and the Third Reich. For those who have the particular interest, this book repays close reading. I must personally thank the author, Brigitte Hamann, for the enormous research project she undertook to bring Winifred Wagner to 21st century readers, and to history. Hamann has meticulously read correspondence, archives, newspapers and conducted personal interviews with those still living. And unlike so many researchers, she brought her story to life in readable language. This is a jam-packed history, brimming with event, and I read almost every word with intense interest. Winifred Wagner's purpose in life was the Richard Wagner festival in Bayreuth, and as head of the festival she maintained a close friendship with Hitler, who was her chief sponsor from 1933 to 1944. The source of this partnership was the so-called "spiritual" relationship between the German nationalist ethos of Wagnerism and the theoretical underpinnings of Nazi Germany. Winifred Wagner was a hyper-nationalist and ardent Hitler supporter since the Munich putsch of 1923, she was a strong anti-Semite as her many letters attest; and yet she extended herself for individuals, especially Jews, many of whom she personally helped and who survived Nazi Germany because of her intervention with Hitler on their behalf. This is fully documented in the book. After the war, unlike most Nazis who hastened to obliterate their past, Winifred Wagner was proud of her friendship with Hitler and made no apologies; never did she try to whitewash her history. She was a remarkable, deeply deluded woman, who ran the Bayreuth festival and headed the Wagner family for many years. Her logistical abilities could easily have been put to deadly use in World War II - luckily, she was buried in Bayreuth where she could do the Allies no military harm! There is no doubt that Bayreuth today is implicated and besmirched by its close Nazi ties. This biography is a brilliant accomplishment. Only toward the end does the story begin to flag as Winifred's life winds down in a series of futile family quarrels. But til then it is a fascinating history. Do read it!

One of the most interesting books of the many that have been written about Nazi Germany. The book explains the motivation behind the seeming adoration of Hitler by the Wagner family. Having read Friedelind Wagner's book "Heritage of Fire" , it was very interesting to get a more objective account of those years in Bayreuth. The book can be read on several different perspectives and is carefully document. this is a "saver"

Quite simply one of the greatest historical biographies you can find, and a source of marvelous insights into the Wagner family, the Fuehrer, the great composer himself, and of course Winifred Wagner. I came away with a far deeper understanding of this woman who, unfortunately, was never able to comprehend that the charming man who brought toys for her children and made Bayreuth a national shrine was in truth a demon. And yet despite that, you cannot read this book without feeling a deep sense of sympathy and admiration for this woman, who courageously saved the lives of many Jews and Communists, whom she naively believed were being persecuted by local thugs without the knowledge of her dear friend Hitler. Naive, at times stupid perhaps, but a great woman with an amazingly big heart, a girl brought up in a cruel orphanage in England to become the dowager empress of Bayreuth - an amazing story told with grace, thoroughness and objectivity. Absolutely a must read.

Winifred Wagner lived a long and complicated life. The English orphan was born in Sussex in 1890 living until 1980. She was adopted by distant relatives living in Germany. Winifred as a child lived in music mad Germany where her guardian was known as a man who was friendly with composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883) the great opera composer. Among Wagner's massive musical dramas the most famous include: The Ring Cycle, Tannhaueser, Lohengrin, The Meistersingers of Nuremburg, The Flying Dutchman and Parsifal. Wagner was a rabid anti-semite whose racial poison was passed on to his children and swallowed whole by the gullible Winifred. She and the Wanger family were early supporters of Hitler giving him money and providing a warm family atmosphere for the lonely dictator. Hamann charts the rise and fall of the Nazis to put the situation of the Wagner family in a broader social and political context.
Winifred was married off at 18 to Siegrfrid Wagner the son of Richard Wagner and his wife Cosima. Siegfried was 45 and eager for heirs to inherit the Wagner name. Siegrfrid was a mediocre composer of operas which are seldom produced in the 21st century. He and his stern willed mother Cosima both died in 1930. He was bisexual. Winfired was left with the awesome task of In a few years the couple had produced four children:
1. Wieland-The arrogant oldest son who served in a leadership capacity at a satellite concentration camp in Bayreuth. He divorced his wife for a younger woman, was rude and dismissive of his mother's wishes. He tried to distance himself from his Nazi past though he had been beloved by the Fuhrer who kept him out of harm's way during the war. Wieland was the festival director for many years until his early death. I did not find him to be a likeable person.
b. Wolfgang was also the Bayreuth Festival Director serving in this capacity for many years following the death of Wieland. He served in the German army during the war. He and his brother both divorced wives for younger women.
c. Friedelind was the family rebel. She became an American citizen and emigrated to escape Nazi Germany. She was strongly influenced by her mentor Arturo Toscanini. She wrote a non-complimentary book about the feduing and fighting money hungry Wagner clan.
d. Verena was the youngest child who was colorless. She wed an SS officer during the war and lived in Bayreuth as a widow.
Winifred Wagner had loving infatuations for the gay English novelist Hugh Walpole and Bayreuth music director Heinz Tietjen. She never remarried following the death of Siegrfried. During World War II she often intervened to save family and friends from the wrath of Nazi justice. She quarreled with such Nazi bigwigs as Himmler, Goebbels and Martin Bormann. Several times she was almost arrested. Following the war she was not imprisoned but suffered through a difficult Denazification court procedure.
Birgitte Hamann has done an impeccable job of telling the story of Winifred and her brood. Aftere 1940 Winifred never saw Hitler but remained loyal to his memory throughout her life. She was a typical German though placed in a position of cultural/artistic power who was seduced by the odious Hitler. This is a fine book of over 500 pages which will prove to be the essential book on Winifred Wagner. She was a complex woman whose moral blindess will forever blot her memory.

A perfect example of How Not to Write a Biography: in sum, do not bore
your readers to death with fact upon fact, repetition upon repetition
upon repetition. (Some of the 4-5 star Amazon reviews hug the superficial).
I found this biography pretty damn baaad. The author cannot write, ok?
As Nancy Mitford said: "Facts are not enough." As presented here the material
would make a nifty 5,000-word article, but only if writ x someone else.
For good writing see David Pryce-Jones' bio of that scampy party girl,
Unity Mitford (sis of Nancy). He recreates a bizarre society.

Along with the recent book on Cosima, another lady of Bayreuth, this volume on Winifred is the logical sequel to the checkered history of
the Wagner family. There was one little detail that was missing. On recounting the many Jews and homosexuals that Winifred hid and saved from
her Nazi friends there is no mention of the singer Ottilie Metzger. She unfortunately did not escape the gas chamber after having sung many performances
of Wagner's music. Her bust stands today in front of the Festspielhouse. Other than that this book is a major work and I reccommend it highly.

There are people who love demolition derbeys and people who love fires and people facinated with Wagner. I am also into being Welsh and knew about Winifred Williams who represents the more innocent side of nationalism and its ideals of peoples and place. Wales is the ideal of this ideal and the heart of this many peopled book of egos and the convolutions of high art with the gutter, is the pricess and the pirate story. As a book, its the first real deal in years... inexpensive. If you are any sort of 20th century WW I and WW II era student this is of interest and value. Through Winifred we see how the Hitlers of history worm into our intellects and better natures.

It would be difficult to match Klingsor Tristan's review of this book so I won't even try!
Suffice it to say that throughout her eventful life Winifred Wagner took a postive joy in confounding, confronting and exasperating those around her.
She lived by a code of absolute loyalty and stayed true to it whether it meant upsetting family members, Third reich officials, or later those she saw as rehabilitating their former Nazi selves.
Hamann's book is a masterpiece of even-handed analysis which ultimately displays a sympathy for the lead protagonist.
She never sought personal gain but always worked for the mission of keeping Wagner's legacy alive.
The Hitler she came to know and admire was the same personable aesthete who charmed all who met him outside his political role. The Fuhrer's deep love for Wagner and his generosity to the Bayreuth festival made them natural bedfellows. It was written in the stars - Winnie and Wolf.
In fact her declining influence with Hitler from the late 30's onwards was as a result of her own obstinate principled stands on behalf of the Festival. She refused to let Nazis interfere in its operation even though she needed their financial assistance.
In later years she reinvented herself as the one true unbiddable follower of Hitler when in reality she was too principled and headstrong to march to anyone else's drum.
The book is a remarkable glimpse into the Jerry Springeresque infighting that seems a part of Wagnerian family life.
It also offers another tantalising insight into the private world of Hitler.
If you're looking for a demonic portrait of the Fuhrer look elsewhere (Trevor-Roper, Kershaw).
This is a mature reasoned and refresingly unpatronising portrayal of the Reich at a time when it dazzled and blinded those who danced into its flames.