Imagined Germany

Acknowledgments

Richard Wagner is surely one of the most debated personalities of the nineteenth century. He is also one of the most thoroughly investigated figures of European history. When Barry Millington started his Wagner biography in 1984, he remarked that “the necessity for a new book on Wagner is to this day regularly and rightly questioned”. Why to write on Wagner? I believe that Wagner is constantly under scholarly scrutiny just because he embodies the European dilemma. In his thinking and art, Wagner encapsulated the opposite sides of European identity. He was an ardent advocate of nationalism and, simultaneously, a spokesman for universalism. He trumpeted for “the purely human”, but was an extreme racist. He took part in the Dresden revolution 150 years ago, only to become later regarded as a conservative, even as an epitome of Nazism.

The political side of Wagner has intrigued me since the late 1980s. In 1993, I wrote my dissertation on his political adventures under the title “Die Herrlichkeit des deutschen Namens …” Die schriftstellerische und politische Tätigkeit Richard Wagnersals Gestalternationaler Identitätwährend der staatlichen Vereinigung Deutschlands. The book at hand is a condensed and rewritten version of this academic work.

During the last decade, I have received assistance and encouragement from several scholars. First, I would like to thank Professor Kalervo Hovi (University of Turku), who supervised my work in the late eighties and ←vii | viii→early nineties. He encouraged me to visit the German archives, a plan finally realized in 1988–89 when I was awarded a scholarship by the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD). I am also grateful to Professor Otto Dann, who guided my work at the University of Cologne. In the course of my research, I have had valuable feedback from Professor Dieter Borchmeyer (University of Heidelberg), Professor Frank B. Josserand (Southwest Texas State University), and from Professor Eero Tarasti (University of Helsinki). In Germany, I would also like to thank the Wagner Archives in Bayreuth—I owe a debt of gratitude especially to the librarian, Günter Fischer, and to the former director of the archives, Manfred Eger, whose help in scrutinizing Wagner’s original manuscripts was invaluable.

Introduction

In August 1876, on his way to Leipzig, Karl Marx passed through the small northern Bavarian town of Bayreuth, where a musical event devoted to Richard Wagner’s operas was being held. In his letter to Friedrich Engels, Marx described the festival as “the state musician’s clown feast.”¹ Marx saw Wagner primarily as a supporter and advocate of the state. This image of Wagner has also been widely shared subsequently, not least because in the 1930s he was raised as the epitome of the Third Reich.

Wagner has thus increasingly been seen as a statist, although his life also offers standpoints for other kinds of interpretation, even for opposite ones. The embarrassing complexity of Wagner’s character is the main reason for his being subject to continual research and reassessments. His personality is associated with surprisingly many nineteenth and twentieth century cultural and social trends. Besides his work as an opera composer, Wagner wrote articles and books, critical surveys and philosophical treatises, poems and short stories. His ideological world has been connected with anarchism, socialism, and fascism, depending on the perspective of the observer. For Robert W. Gutman, Wagner was merely a milestone on the way from Jahn to Hitler, whereas for George Bernard Shaw he was a great socialist who leant more towards Proudhon and Bakunin than to Jahn.² We should certainly dismiss the notion that there is only one Wagner, who can be classified in any single category. During the Dresden years (1842–49), Wagner was an ←1 | 2→anti-statist anarchist and participated with his friends Michael Bakunin and Gottfried Semper in a local uprising in May 1849. In the 1860s and 1870s, however, he turned his back on the barricades and strove directly to influence key political actors, and in May 1871 even met Otto von Bismarck.

The “spiritual proximity” between Wagner and Bismarck was often accentuated in the incendiary speeches and powerful writings of the Wagnerians. As late as 1924, August Püringer stated: “Bismarck and Wagner strove for common goals, which were as inseparable as the activity of the heart and the lungs, or the bodily functions of the heart and the brain.”³ At the time Marx passed through Bayreuth, Wagner was so commonly associated with the cause of the unified Germany that Marx’s misinterpretation of Wagner is fully understandable.

Wagner has consequently been classified as a statist, but similarly also as “the most German being,” even a kind of prototype of Deutschtum. It is undeniable that particularly in the 1860s and 70s Wagner believed that he knew what Deutschtum actually meant. Besides, his political activity was thoroughly infused with nationalist features. The purpose of this book is to deconstruct Wagner’s ideas of Deutschtum: that is, to define what he really meant when he wrote or spoke about this concept. It must be remembered that prior to 1871 Germany was a politically disintegrated area. Already by 1865 Wagner was claiming that the goal of his artistic function was the cultural greatness of Germany, which in the course of time would mature into political greatness. It is thus relevant to pose the question: “What would this future Germany be like, the Germany in which his idea of nationality could be realized?”

In 1864, when the German Wars of Unification started, Wagner settled in Munich, having been invited there by King Ludwig II of Bavaria. At this time, he began to dream of a community which would be led by a royal patron of arts. In this community his art would be allowed to flourish undisturbed and give guidance to the soul of the German people. As the conflict between Austria and Prussia became more and more intensified, ←2 | 3→Wagner was driven to seek political support from Prussia. The connection of these political turns with Wagner’s ideological function, with his ideas of Germany and Deutschtum, offers an interesting perspective on the general intellectual history of the period. Accordingly, it is central to the questions which will be treated in this study to examine Wagner’s engagement in politics at the practical level, and how he strove to fulfil his dream of the future Germany. It might be argued that Wagner’s involvement in the political arena is already well-known, and that his life has been recounted many times before. I believe, however, that bringing together his intellectual and political sides can generate new insights into German cultural and political history during the nineteenth century.

On the whole, Wagner’s political thinking has been investigated fairly thoroughly, particularly, his antisemitism, for instance, by Paul Lawrence Rose in Wagner: Race and Revolution (1992), and Marc A. Weiner’s study Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination (1995).⁴ Wagner’s relationship with the Jews seems to stimulate a never-ending debate which continually produces new interpretations. More comprehensive views of Wagner’s political ideas have been written by, for instance, Maurice Boucher, Eric Eugène and Andrea Mork⁵, but no deeper historical analysis concerning Wagner’s political project on the eve of unification has yet been made. Frank B. Josserand’s study Richard Wagner: Patriot and Politician (1981), which could be characterized as a biographical description of Wagner as a nationalist, comes close to my own views.⁶ The work comments on Wagner’s life through the theme of nationality. The problem with this book, however, is its biographical nature; the exploration of the wider cultural context remains unattained. Another work on Wagner’s political project is Verena Naegele’s book Parsifals Mission, which concentrates on the relationship between Wagner and Ludwig.⁷ Astonishingly, it is based only on printed sources, although there are many archival documents available. Furthermore, Naegele examines only the beginnings of Wagner’s project. For the focus of my study, however, it is crucial that Wagner continued his activities after his close cooperation with Ludwig; especially significant is his relationship to Bismarck, which has not been sufficiently touched upon in previous Wagner literature.

In the following study, I shall deal with Wagner’s concept of nationality, but also with his ideological and political function during the period 1864–1871, since it is precisely through these activities that his ideas are revealed. The limits of the period investigated derive from Wagner’s second phase of involvement in political functions, beginning in 1864, after the ←3 | 4→break caused by his revolutionary activities in Dresden. This time Wagner aimed at indirect influence, having found a patron for himself and his art on the Bavarian throne. In 1871, his attempts to obtain support from the summit of the political hierarchy were consistent with his Bayreuth project, for which he later sought support directly from the people, as no official support from Berlin was forthcoming. The three wars (against Denmark, Austria, and Prussia) which led to the birth of a unified Germany also occurred during 1864–1871.

The leitmotif of this study is to observe an artist as a politician. This angle has been surprisingly unusual both in the study of art and in research on political history. In historical research, past events have often been explained from the perspective of a political game, economic necessity, or social movements, but cultural factors have been marginalized or minimized to no more than the legitimation of social phenomena or needs. This particularly applies to the tradition in German political history. For instance, the tradition of the diplomatic-military interpretation of German unification continued broken as late as the 1960s, when Helmut Böhme, in his Deutschlands Weg zur Grossmacht (1966), described the process as a chain of events mainly steered by economic interests. Böhme does not present any cultural basis for unification: everything is mere dialogue between politics and the economy.⁸

The combination of art with politics is interesting for many reasons. Of course, artists have been exploited for the justification of many operations. International artists have been used for political purposes, even as real agents (for example, Ignace Paderwski and Emma Destinova). There is also evidence that, for instance, the composer and pianist Franz Liszt, when circulating in the European salons, acquired information for the use of his son-in-law, Emile Ollivier, who was the French Prime Minister. When stress is placed on this type of relationship between art and politics, the primary basis for the scrutiny of historical events is typically located in politics.

In general, politics has been understood as a mode of realism, dictated by the gravity of situations, rather than an act of imagination striving for better living conditions. Art, or creative activity more widely, on the other hand, relies on potential, hypothetical worlds. This peculiarity alone makes the effect of art unique in the discovery of new horizons. In the scrutiny of Richard Wagner, it is essential to keep in mind that he was constantly striving to demolish completely the borders between art and politics; as he wrote in 1851: “No one now can poetise, without politising.”⁹ In the following, I shall treat Wagner’s nationalist thinking and political action in the ←4 | 5→context of his theoretical understanding of art: these concepts form a unity which can justifiably be called a national utopia. Although Wagner’s dream remained unfulfilled, it is significant as an interpretation of the expectations and demands projected on the united Germany. Shortly before his death, Wagner intended to move to the United States. Like many of his contemporaries, he was disappointed with the fact that the new German Empire did not fulfil national expectations.

Even though Richard Wagner is essentially known as a composer, the primary sources of my study are his writings, not his compositions. The investigation of a composer’s ideological world is difficult, for artists seldom express their thinking in literary form, except in correspondence. For Wagner, the situation is eased by the fact that his literary output was vast. This unusually active literary function was largely due to the fact that the success of Wagner’s operas was at the beginning relatively modest, and he chose to approach the public through other means. William Weber has pointed out that in the first stages his writings contributed much more to the spread of his reputation than did his music. As an artist, Wagner was thus unusual: at first he created a theory of art and then through this theory the possibilities for the reception of his works. It is uncertain how long Wagner’s operas would have been ignored by the public if he had not first written his theoretical treatises and articles on art. Composing usually involves some kind of theoretical shaping, but seldom have these reflections reached the public. In the romantic period, those artists who strove to ensure their audience of their spontaneous genius, wanted to give an inspiration-centred picture of their creative work. There was a clear striving to conceal the crafted features in the making of art, and this covertness also applies to the theorizing underlying their art.¹⁰

Richard Wagner, accordingly, thought highly of the literary function in creating a communicative relationship with the audience. The composer’s ←5 | 6→task was not only limited to “tunes in music.” It is no wonder that Wagner strove to control the kind of image of himself which his texts gave. He even seems to have written his letters with an eye to their possible future publication.¹¹

In his writings, Wagner set out to create an image of Deutschtum. Benedict Anderson’s idea of a nation as an “imagined community” has been a starting-point for my work. According to Anderson, all communities “larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even these)” are based on contract-bound, imagined bonds.¹² In the German situation, it can be argued that the demand for unification was justified through the creation of “a fictitious unity,” the German nation, which would then subsequently develop into a political unit.

I see ‘nationality’ here as a construction comparable to myth: not as a subconscious, irrational phenomenon, but as a concept similar to the definition of myth represented by Claude Lévi-Strauss: to the members of a community, myth is a form of rational communication, a means to solve internal basic contradictions, but besides this, it is also a means to control external reality (for instance other communities). This takes place through social concepts and notions conveyed by the myth.¹³ Following Lévi-Strauss’s ideas, we could interpret the German myth as a communication for a community constituted by the German people. Its function could be to solve the grave dilemma in the life of the community, the problem of German disintegration (for instance, through the accentuation of the greatness of the German spirit, which would grow into political greatness). Through the social concepts which this myth conveys, it would create an identity for the community, and make it recognizably distinct from the surrounding communities. If we combine Lévi-Strauss’s and Anderson’s ideas, it can be argued that myth is not only addressed to a community: it participates in creating a sense of community, and thus creates bonds that form a nation.

The most important contemporary material used as primary sources in this study are Wagner’s writings which date back to 1864–1871: Über Staat und Religion (1864), Deutsche Kunst und deutsche Politik (1867–1868), Beethoven (1870), and the diary entries written to Ludwig II on 14th–27th September 1865. The notes which Wagner wrote when he was sketching out his writings, and which are preserved at the Wagner Archives in Bayreuth, have also provided useful and interesting material for this investigation.¹⁴ In addition to these texts, this study also relies on Wagner’s other prose ←6 | 7→writings: on The Brown Book, the autobiography Mein Leben, and on his correspondence.

One thing counts above all else: freedom! But what is “freedom”? is it—as our politicians believe—“licence?”—of course not! Freedom is: integrity. He who is true to himself, i.e. who acts in accord with his own being, and in perfect harmony with his own nature, is free.¹⁵

All his life, Wagner displayed an enthusiastic interest in fiction and poetry. Thus he himself wrote the librettos for all his operas, and the text of Wieland der Schmied, for which he never composed the music. In addition, Wagner wrote short stories (Eine Pilgerfahrt zu Beethoven 1840 and Ein Ende in Paris 1840–41), poems, and the play Die Kapitulation (1870), the purpose of which was to disparage the French. Wagner was at his best when he was writing in a free and informal style. Heinrich Heine commented on Wagner’s short stories written during his Paris years: “Hoffmann would have been incapable of writing such a thing!”¹⁶

Wagner’s relationship to writing is easier to understand in the light of his unshakeable belief in his own genius. Wagner believed that he was a genius—a kind of l’uomo universale of the arts, able to master any specific area of art.¹⁷ He believed that he was capable of creating a fusion of all arts (Gesamtkunstwerk), in which all the constituent elements supported each other. This strong belief in his own abilities was, of course, projected on to his texts. He allowed his thoughts to flow freely, since any thought produced by a genius was valuable. These thoughts he was prepared to give as a gift to his people. It is hardly surprising that by 1868, he was planning to bless the German people with his collected literary works.¹⁸

From the works relevant from the perspective of this study, only Deutsche Kunst und deutsche Politik and Beethoven were published before 1871. Deutsche Kunst und deutsche Politik first appeared as a series of ←7 | 8→articles in the paper Süddeutsche Presse, between 24th September–19th December 1867. Wagner had originally planned to include 15 articles in the series, but publication was discontinued; Wagner’s fanatically nationalist line was too much for Ludwig II, who decisively influenced the ban on the articles.¹⁹ Despite the ban, as a result of vigorous action, Wagner published his texts as a book in the following year, 1868.

Wagner wrote his text Über Staat und Religion immediately after his arrival in Munich in 1864. Ludwig II had requested from him a clarification of the changes in his thinking since 1849–1851. This exposition was not published until 1871–73, in the edition of Wagner’s completed works. The differences between the published version and the original manuscript are slight.²⁰ In the following, I refer to the manuscript only where it differs from the published version.

Of much more interest is the relationship between the original diary entries written to Ludwig in 1865, and the published version. On the basis of the diary entries, Wagner wrote an abridged article Was ist deutsch? which was published in the Bayreuther Blätter (2/1878). In the Wagner literature, references are often made to this published version as if it had been written in 1865. This is, however, a methodological mistake in the use of primary sources, because the differences between the diary entries and the published article are striking. The observation of this difference is significant from the perspective of my study, because during the period 1865–1878, significant changes took place in Wagner’s way of thinking.

In the reformulation of the diary entries for publication, seven different phases can be identified: the first version was written by Wagner with a lead pencil, which eased the corrections in the text. After that, he rewrote the text in ink over the text written in pencil.²¹ The third phase was copying, which was carried out by Cosima.²² This version was sent by Wagner in instalments, as supplements to his letters to Ludwig. After this, Wagner did not treat his text for several years, though he modified the same ideas in his Deutsche Kunst und deutsche Politik. Wagner took these diary entries very seriously, and he presumably thought that they could contribute to German self-understanding. When he was sketching a plan for his collected works, he included the article Was ist deutsch?, which was based on the diary entries in the plan (the title was thus already decided upon).²³ When the collected works were finally published in 1871–73, the article Was ist deutsch? was excluded; Wagner had evidently not been able, after all, to modify the material in the diary in the way he desired. In his diary entries, Wagner, among other things, had denigrated the Prussians with venomous ←8 | 9→turns of phrases, and in the year 1871 such a derogatory text could by no means be published any more: the Prussians were now leading Germany.

Wagner was still a great believer in the ideas of nationality which he had put forward in the diary entries. At regular intervals, he returned to this text, and thought about its content.²⁴ He did not set out to produce a revised version, however, until 1878, and even then he was still cautious.²⁵ At first, he only wrote the preface and the epilogue to the text (the fourth phase).²⁶ This text was copied by Cosima (the fifth phase)²⁷; then followed the typesetting of the text. The original ideas were thus advanced through changes in proof-reading (the sixth phase).²⁸ At this point, Wagner suddenly switched to a much more radical approach to the text. The article was abridged to less than a third of the original length. When the article Was ist deutsch? was finally published in the Bayreuther Blätter (the seventh and the last phase) as a result of ardent support from Hans von Wolzogen, editor-in-chief of the journal, it was lacking in all direct political references.²⁹ Two subjects, in particular, were totally blue-pencilled by Wagner in the revision sheet. The first related to a political and cultural critique of Prussia; the references to French-Jewish degeneration in Berlin and to the un-German nature of Prussian policy were drastically revised. Another sensitive subject related to the detailed cultural-political programme which Wagner wanted to propose to Ludwig, including the foundation of a Wagnerian newspaper and a music school. Through such operations, he believed, Bavaria could become a significant cultural state.

The various phases of the entries in the diary are thus part of the thematic approach of this study. When Wagner wrote his text in 1865, he dreamt of a Germany where the artistic power of his works would be connected with the political power of Ludwig II. By 1878, however, the situation had decisively changed.

One of the most striking stylistic features of Wagner’s, texts is the range of rhetorical devices. Before my actual historical analysis, I would like to focus some attention on this rhetoric, especially on its tendency to use contrasts. This rhetoric, based on oppositions, already tells us much about his idea of Deutschtum.