1
Epilogue to the English edition of “ Who he does not howl with the Wolf Autobiography of Gottfried Wagner
(UK: Sanctuary/ April 1998 - USA-Canada: St.Martin’s & Picador, NYC / Fall 1998) When the original German edition of this book appeared at the end of February 1997, I was aware that it was likely to polarize public opinion on the subject of `Richard Wagner in Bayreuth`. But I underestimated international media interest and the subsequent knock-on effect, because I mistakenly assumed that my autobiography would be driven into the background by other passionately conducted discussions in the German-speaking countries on repression of the Nazi period. Fierce controversy had broken out yet again, over Daniel
Goldhagen`s book, Hitler`s Willing Executioners, and over the exhibition on the crimes of the German Nazi Wehrmacht in Munich. But in `neutral` Switzerland too, people had been forced to face up to the topic of the repression of Hitler`s barbarism. The overwhelming weight of evidence against the Swiss banks who had done murky business with Nazi gold, in other words with stolen Jewish property, had aroused worldwide attention. The increased international sensitivity to the subject of repression was to work in my favour on discussion of my book.
In subsequent reading tours from March to mid December 1997 in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Belgium I made myself available not only for discussion with my readers, but also with the media, in interviews, round table discussions and talk shows. At the same time I was confronted by published reviews of my book.
The unusually high pressure resulting from the crossfire of opinions and the constant travelling made it impossible for me to come to any coherent conclusions on these reactions at the time. Like other authors whose books arouse public controversy, I was forced to recognize that opinions on my autobiography had assumed their own dynamic, which only seldom had anything to do with my intentions. At first I found the profusion of reactions to my book confusing, for besides objective articles - such as in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Deutsche Lehrerzeitung, Liechtensteiner Vaterland, Die Presse - others with a conformist tendency appeared, based on vague claims to power, which aimed at preventing constructive criticism of the existing politico-cultural situation within the 2
Bayreuth Redemption Co. Ltd. The similarity of means used against my book by the various conformists in the media scene was striking: simplification and banalization of the subject matter, reminding one of Milan Kundera`s phrase, in his The Book of Laughter and Forgetting: `The struggle of man against power is the struggle of the memory against forgetting.`1 While I was trying to analyse the opinions of the conformist journalists of various provenance, I came across the books The Madness of Normality and False Gods by the psychoanalyst Arno Gruen. In False Gods Gruen sees `the capacity of man from birth to decide over his life. Either his empathy becomes the kernel of his being, or he will constantly try to escape it.` In this sense, for Gruen `human development is always the history of the damage to his abilities`. Hence Gruen distinguishes between `the integrated man, who remains in contact with his inner self and acts accordingly, and the man who focuses outward, who has a divided consciousness and a divided perception. His actions will always be directed against the holistic and in spite of technological progress, offend against life.` 2 In
Madness as Normality Gruen describes the split in the inner life of all conformists - therefore in the media too - when dealing with information, in the following way: `In order to rationalize, they have to separate thinking and feeling from one another. Public power is a means for maintaining the inner split. But such a man does not seek power for its own sake, but to find support in it and in order not to disintegrate. Hence he cannot afford any compromises either. Every increase in control enlarges the inner vacuum and of necessity provokes an intensified need for domination. If such people are treated with respect, they will interpret any compliance as weakness. Because for them there is no equality, for them there is only domination and being dominated.`3 Hence Gruen comes to the general conclusion that for the man `who has surrendered to power, there can basically be no equality in social relations. [...] Dealings with other people are determined by strength and weakness. Therefore more and more power must be accumulated. The aim here is to become invulnerable and be able to prove invulnerability.`4 But what do Gruen`s perceptions have to do with the Redemption Co. Ltd in
Bayreuth, conformist journalists of all shades and my autobiography? Anyone who has studied some of the striking reactions of the said groups to my book over the past year, will 3 understand the connection. Reactions of the Redemption Co. Ltd and its circles
On 28 February 1997 my father, Wolfgang Wagner, to the applause of the Festspiele sponsors, the Society of Friends of Bayreuth, foremost among them President E. Hilger and private banker K.G. Schmidt, described my autobiography as `insulting, defamatory and slanderous`. With reference to the Bayreuth Festspiele he called the book `a considerable impairment and as yet unassessable injury to its international repute`. As in his 1994 autobiography, Acts, in his three-page open letter to the international media he ignored the influence of Wagner`s and Hitler`s antisemitism on the Bayreuth Festspiele and hence on himself and his work. It was clear to me that the city of Bayreuth and the media subservient to the Festspielhügel would now have to take up positions against me, as my attack on the institution of the Festspiele also applied to them. A pleasant surprise for me was that the
Redemption Co. Ltd and its circles could neither dominate the international, independent media world in their usual way, with their furtive legal threats, nor with demagogic counter- attacks. On the contrary: hitting out at me helped my book to attract even greater international attention. Because of the stir it caused, it was catapulted into the bestseller lists in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and translations into six different languages have been negotiated. On 10 March 1997 the mayors of the city of Bayreuth issued an open letter in which my book was decried as `malicious agitation` and therefore they refused any serious discussion on the results of Wagner`s antisemitism. But this open letter also brought about the opposite of intentions: discussion flared up anew and international media pressure on the repression paradise of Bayreuth grew. The comparison of my father`s autobiography with mine now became more focused. My wish for a disclosure of the connection between family and German history and the case of the Wagners in Bayreuth was given more and more respect. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung of 12-13 April 1997 acknowledged that `[my] book had rendered a contribution to that critical history of Bayreuth that neither Wieland nor Wolfgang
Wagner have provided or provoked`. On the very day of my reading in Bayreuth - 24 April 1997 - I learned from the 4
Nordbayrischer Kurier, which is loyal to the Festspielhügel, that a planned exhibition on my grandmother Winifred Wagner, Hitler`s intimate friend, had been cancelled by the Festspiele.
At the end of April the Neue Zürcher Zeitung reported, regarding the official reasons for cancellation: `A still incomplete processing of archive material from all over the world which has only recently become accessible. The in part surprising new facts would first have to be classified according to their historical background, declared Wolfgang Wagner. Selected documents on that part of Festspiele history which is accompanied by manifold prejudices [ = Nazi period] will be published in this year`s Festspiele book` (dpa). The truth was that as a result of the discussions provoked by my book, a German bank had withdrawn its offer to finance the planned pro-Winifred Wagner exhibition. The international media recognized the intention to deceive of the Festspiele administration and frankly expressed doubts on the reasons given for the cancellation. At the opening of the Bayreuth Festspiele on 25 July 1997 they really thought in the
Festspiele book that they could hoodwink the world`s media, as the truth of Bayreuth writing of history, that six postcards (from the years 1929 to 1936) from Hitler to Winifred Wagner were the sum total of the correspondence from the Führer to the great lady from 1923 to
1945. The atmosphere during the international press conference on 27 July was correspondingly charged. There were some hard-hitting attacks from the international media regarding the irresponsible treatment of undesirable, incriminating documents before, during and after the Nazi period. In spite of this situation both sponsors and the Festspiele administration kept up the attack against me: on 28 August - at the end of the Festspiele - one could read in the Süddeutsche Zeitung the Festspiele administration`s corrected version of events during the press conference on 27 July: `By “fascist and racist elements”, which
Wolfgang Wagner located among many critics [on 27 July 1997], he meant the book by his son Gottfried, not articles by journalists.` In this sense too, the attempts should be interpreted from September on by the chief dramaturg of the Bayreuth Festspiele, in close cooperation with some members of the Society of Friends of Bayreuth to bring their massive influence to bear on German and international public opinion (inter alia in Austria, Britain, the Netherlands and Finland). 5
Two conformist opinions: Seferens and Spotts
In the slander campaign waged by the Redemption Co Ltd and their circles, the publication of an article in the Allgemeine Jüdische Wochenzeitung (AJWZ) on 2 May 1997 played a decisive part. The content of the article by the non-Jewish author Horst Seferens corresponded to the headlines which are revealing as regards the power games played in and around the Redemption Co. Ltd: `What Gottfried Wagner still needed to say to his therapist: Wagner`s book is an at times painful attempt at that grasping philosemitism, with which a certain type of German tries to effect a sort of change of front - an egoistic clutching at the
Jewish coat tails.` Seferens viewed himself later as a victim of captions he had not written himself, rejected their connection with his `essay` and thought in this way to escape all responsibility. He went even further: he alleged, with reference to an anonymous editor in the AJWZ, that the critical counter-views, which had been voiced in the AJWZ on 12 June against his article, had been `ordered`. Searching questions to the board of the AJWZ and many wilfully blind Jewish Wagnerians both inside and outside Germany have still to be answered.
A similar `psychoanalysis` for the purpose of personal defamation was provided in an article by Frederic Spotts, a faithful follower of Wieland Wagner and New Bayreuth pilgrim since 1957, and author of one of the plethora of conformist books on the history of the Bayreuth Festspiele. To his article in the July 1997 issue of the London-based Opera, in which he states, `It is debatable whether such a story is appropriately discussed in a cultural publication or in a journal of clinical psychology`, I reacted briefly as follows: Frederic Spotts`s criticism of my autobiography is based on a wrong assumption with
regard to the goals which I follow in my autobiographical notes. Contrary to the reviewer`s book on the Bayreuth Wagner Festival, my autobiography does not focus on the aesthetic consequences of the theatrical work in Bayreuth since 1951, but mainly on its socio-political implications. Therefore, most of Spotts`s review misses
the essence of my book. The attempt to save `New Bayreuth` with aesthetic arguments - an attempt Spotts 6
supports - forces him into an historically and scientifically untenable assessment of the political role played by the second and third generations post-Richard Wagner.
The work of observers such as Köhler, Hein, Naegele, Karbaum, Zelinsky, Schüler, Craig, Prieberg, Wulf, Meyer, Wistrich, Ley (among others) have convincingly demonstrated that Wagner`s descendants and the `Bayreuth Circle` developed Wagner`s anti-Semitism to a level of normative space and politics wherein
Hitler found it easy to operate after World War I. In my opinion, playing down the history of Bayreuth is dangerous.
With regard to the reviewer`s suggested factual corrections, I have relied on
information given to me by my grandmother, Winifred Wagner. Insofar as she - or I - may have erred, these points have already been considered for the English, American, French, Spanish, Italian and Japanese publication of my book, as well as for the third German edition.
GOTTFRIED H. WAGNER Cerro Maggiore, Italy PS: The allegations which the reviewer makes regarding my inheritance are simply
false..5 The above-named persons wanted neither to deal with my autobiography in its development up to the chapter `Eugenio, my son` nor with the final chapter, `And in the beginning was Auschwitz: the Post-Holocaust Group`; they remain angrily silent on Ralph
Giordano`s charge `against the Bayreuth lies` in the introduction to my autobiography, as they do not want to face up to the consequences of his statements. They do not feel responsibility when dealing with personal power and therefore their goal remains, to use
Gruen`s words, `to become invulnerable and be able to prove invulnerability`.6 To explore the reasons for this I leave above all to the readers of integrity (Gruen), for whom I wrote my autobiography. In spite of everything I do not condemn the persons named who have attacked me: I am grateful to them for having furthered my autonomy and my future life beyond Wagner and Hitler. Gottfried Wagner, 18 January 1998, Cerro Maggiore 7
Notes
1 Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, trans. by Aaron Asher, Faber & Faber 1996.
2 Arno Gruen, Falsche Götter - Über Liebe, Hass und die Schwierigkeit des Friedens, DTV, Munich 1993, p. 11.
3 Arno Gruen, Der Wahnsinn der Normalität, Realität als Krankheit: eine grundlegende Theorie zur menschlichen Destruktivität, DTV, Munich 1996, p. 189.
4 Ibid., p. 139.
5 Gottfried Wagner, letter in Opera, November The Wagner Legacy An autobiographyMPG BooksBodman 1998 Gottfried Wagner: Wer nicht mit dem Wolf heult orginal German title Kiepenheuer & Witsch 1997 – published in 7 languages from 1999 to 2006
[Text on page 27 of German edition] Motto: Are the children responsible for the atrocities of their fathers? Yes, if they hold to the fatal way of their fathers. But do not all suffer from the atrocities of others? One stumbles by chance over the atrocities of others. Does that mean that all are made responsible for one another8? Yes, there, where a man had the power in his hands to protest, and failed to do so.
Based on: Sanhedrin, 27 b 1997, pp. 1282-3.
6 See note 4.