Bayreuth after Wagner: Psychosocial Perspectives on Cosima Wagner, Winifred Wagner, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain Eric Doughney Submitted in fulfilment of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy International Centre for Music Studies Newcastle University January 2018 Abstract The Wagner institution at Bayreuth, after Wagner, was shaped as much by the psychologies of those to whom the composer’s legacy was entrusted as it was by purely historical and political events. Entwining musicological, philosophical, sociological, and psychoanalytic discourses, this revisionist and hermeneutic history of Bayreuth focuses on three individuals whose lives were acutely intertwined with the cultural and political evolution of the establishment: Cosima Wagner, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and Winifred Wagner. Their personal and social paths were embedded in larger political and cultural changes, especially German nationalism, yet despite the intensity of their nationalist affinities none was indigenously German and in childhood each lacked those influences now considered essential for effective individuation. Following an initial discussion on Wagner, character studies of each applying, particularly, Jungian and Eriksonian theory explore the extent to which those absences and related factors informed not only their personal development but also the dynamics of their respective relationships with Wagner from which our perception of the composer and Bayreuth as an institution derives. i ii For my family iii iv Acknowledgements Considering the number of years it has taken to bring this project to completion, those who have provided me throughout with a critical eye, a listening ear, and their abiding support deserve especial recognition. This small but highly valued band includes my supervisors, Professor David Clarke and Dr Paul Attinello of ICMuS, Newcastle University whom I thank for their time, wisdom, and, above all, infinite patience; the staff of ICMuS whose boundless enthusiasm for music and the advancement of knowledge has enriched my studies and broadened my horizons; Rose and Enzo Di Mascio with whom I have enjoyed many a meal and lively conversation, and all the fellow PhD students who have become friends over the course of the journey. Lastly, but not least, I would like to thank my parents, John and Audrey, and my family for their steadfast encouragement across the years. Good people, all. v vi Contents Abstract i Dedication iii Acknowledgments v Contents vii Figures ix Introduction 1 Epistemological and Methodological Framework 3 Sources 12 Bayreuth and post-Wagner Bayreuth 15 Wagner and Wagnerism: Institutionalisation, Representation, and Misrepresentation 17 Cosima Wagner, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and Winifred Wagner 19 Identity 21 Chapter 1: The Parabola of Life: A Psychosocial Genealogy of the Wagnerian Aesthetic 25 Nineteenth-Century German Society and the Wagnerian Objective 26 Wagnerian Germanness: Synergy and Rupture 31 The Aging Wagner and Readjustment of his Ideas 36 Wagner’s Aesthetic and Reading of Germannness as Products of Middle Age 40 Wahn: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Parsifal, and Erikson’s Psychosocial Step Development Theory 48 Wagner, Community, and the Artist in Society 56 Wagner and Parsifal in terms of Weberian Charisma and Hofferian Mass Movement Theory 58 Towards a post-Wagner Bayreuth 63 Chapter 2: Cosima Wagner 66 Cosima in the Literature 67 The Diaries 71 vii Chapter 2: Cosima Wagner Cont’d Cosima: A Concise Biography 79 The Father, Fatherlessness, and the Father Figure 83 Cosima in search of the Father Figure 85 Cosima and the Father Figure defined in terms of Will and Representation 87 Cosima as Narcissist 93 Cosima defined in terms of Acquired Situational Narcissism 97 Cosima defined in terms of the Hofferian Sinner 100 Chapter 3: Houston Stewart Chamberlain 105 Chamberlain in the Literature 107 Houston Stewart Chamberlain: A Concise Biography 110 Chamberlain: Celebrity, Narcissism, and the Wagner Family 119 Chamberlain: Hofferian, Jungian, and Eriksonian Perspectives 126 Chamberlain as Link in Cultural Chains 129 Chapter 4: Winifred Wagner 137 Representations of Winifred 138 The Wagner Family: Expectations and Individuality 141 Winifred Williams and Siegfried Wagner 143 From Winifred Williams to Winifred Wagner 146 Marriage and Politics 148 Winifred Wagner and Hugh Walpole 155 Winifred Wagner and Adolf Hitler 156 Disorders and Politics 158 Rebellion and Retaliation 160 Winifred and Archetypes: Daughter-Adjutant, Phallic Woman, Redemptive Female, and the Mother Figure 163 Winifred, Hitler, the Mother Figure, and the Redemptive Female 166 Heinz Tietjen 171 Winifred: Denazification and a New Bayreuth 173 viii Conclusion: Bayreuth: Beyond Good and Evil 180 Toward the Unknown Region: Implications for Future Research 185 An End and a Beginning 185 Bibliography 197 Figures Figure 1: Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages of Life (Psychosocial Step Development Theory) 51 ix x Introduction When we look at human history we see only what happens on the surface, and even this is distorted in the faded mirror of tradition. But what has really been happening eludes the inquiring eye of the historian, for the true historical event lies deeply buried, experienced by all and observed by none. It is the most private and subjective of psychic experiences. Wars, dynasties, social upheavals, conquests, and religions are but the superficial symptoms of a secret psychic attitude unknown to even the individual himself. Carl Jung 1 The theme of this work is the centrality of identity and individuation in the formation of post- Wagner Bayreuth.2 Focusing upon three people most accredited with shaping our perception of the institution – Cosima Wagner, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and Winifred Wagner – the study asks what light an investigation of their psychodynamics using psychoanalytic (and related kinds of) theories might throw on an understanding of the social and political dynamics of Bayreuth after Wagner. Over a series of character studies and an initial discussion of the composer and his aesthetic to contextualise its argument, the work will extend that of Oliver Hilmes, Brigitte Hamann, and Bryan Magee,3 and argue that Wagner’s institution was posthumously shaped not by the dystopian politics with which it has since become synonymous but, rather, by the personal circumstances and issues of those charged with its curation. This appears to be a timely venture. For some commentators, amongst them John Deathridge, a provocative Carl Dahlhaus, and Tom Sutcliffe, the story of Richard Wagner has been told to exhaustion.4 Yet it seems the story of the Wagnerian afterlife and its production has seldom been recounted other than chronologically and empirically, in the biographical or 1 C.G. Jung, R.F.C. Hull (trans.), Gerhard Adler, Michael Fordham, Herbert Read (eds.), The Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol.10 : Civilisation in Transition (Hove: Routledge, 2015), 148. 2 Here, in keeping with established practice, the term ‘Bayreuth’ refers to the Festival and institution established in 1876 by Richard Wagner at the Bavarian town of Bayreuth. 3 Brigitte Hamann, Alan Bance (trans.), Winifred Wagner: A Life at the Heart of Hitler’s Bayreuth (London: Granta, 2005); Oliver Hilmes, Stewart Spencer (trans.), Cosima Wagner: The Lady of Bayreuth (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011); Bryan Magee, Wagner and Philosophy (London: Allen Lane, Penguin, 2000); Bryan Magee, Aspects of Wagner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).To date, the works by Hamann and Hilmes are widely recognised as being the first exhaustive studies of their subjects. 4 John Deathridge, Wagner Beyond Good and Evil (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008); Tom Sutcliffe, Believing in Opera (London: Faber and Faber, 1998); Carl Dahlhaus, Mary Whitall (trans.), Richard Wagner’s Music-Dramas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). While Arnold Whittall notes that Dahlhaus’ ‘deliberately exaggerated rhetoric’ was intended to draw attention to what he saw as ‘the pernicious influence of non-musicians in Wagner study’ and the increasing anagogic interpretation of Wagner’s works, it can also be said that Dahlhaus inadvertently highlighted the paucity of a more three-dimensional scholarship on Wagner, his work, and those associated with it. See Arnold Whittall, review of Barry Millington, Richard Wagner: The Sorcerer of Bayreuth (London: Thames and Hudson, 2012), Gramophone, Vol. 90, 5/13, 112. 1 historical accounts of those persons and events with which the composer has since become bracketed, shaping how we think of him, how we hear him, and how we remember him.5 Despite a sizeable body of scholarship our reception of Wagner still tends to focus on, and is refracted by, the events that played out at Bayreuth between 1922 and 1945 when the Festival became associated with German National Socialism. It is an understandably instinctive, if not necessarily accurate, correlation, for certainly the historical afterlife of Wagner is very dark and the tone of current discourses suggests that we are still very much in the fallout. Clearly, the discourse of politics cannot entirely be removed from any Wagner- related discussion: the complexity of the composer’s extra-musical ideas, the extent to which he voiced them and to which they have been interpreted renders such an idea virtually impossible.6 Nevertheless, by continuing to situate Wagner and his enterprise as the harbingers of Nazism the general attitude has shrunk to a median of predictable