| Twilight of the Wagners: The Unveiling of a Family's Legacy by Gottfried Wagner Picador USA. 1999 (first published in German in 1997) English translation by Della Couling Twilight of the Wagners: The Unveiling of a Family's Legacy by Gottfried Wagner is, despite its title, the autobiography of one member of the Wagner family. Born in 1947, Gottfried Wagner was the son of Wolfgang Wagner and also the nephew of Wieland Wagner and the great-grandson of the famous composer Richard Wagner. Gottfried's father, uncle, and grandmother (Winifred Wagner) were friendly with Adolf Hitler from 1923 until Hitler's death. He occasionally visited the family at Bayreuth, site of the Wagner festival where the family lived and were involved in the presentation of Wagner's operas. Winifred Wagner may even have furnished Hitler with the paper on which he wrote Mein Kampf during a period of incarceration. Gottfried states that his family have failed, in the years since the conclusion of the war, to acknowledge the extent of their anti-Semitism and of their support of Hitler. Gottfried has long been interested in greater understanding between Germans and the Jewish Holocaust survivors. He has had difficult relations with his family, and has been estranged from his father, who has overseen the Bayreuth Festival since Wieland Wagner's death in 1966. Gottfried tells us that Wolfgang has used his connections in the operatic world to make it difficult for Gottfried to earn a living as an opera director. In addition to his work in the field of opera, Gottfried has also worked in a bank and as a journalist, and has eventually made a career for himself lecturing about Wagner, the Holocaust, and German-Jewish relations. He emerges from his story as a somewhat likeable well-meaning individual who has finally found happiness in his second marriage. His second wife is an Italian, with whom he has adopted a Romanian child. Gottfried has also become a Roman Catholic. Throughout his life, Gottfried has had trouble getting along with other people, and one cannot avoid wondering to what extent, if any, the problem may be due to his own difficult nature. Gottfried asserts repeatedly that Richard Wagner and his operas were anti-Semitic. Quotation of an excerpt from Wagner's essay The Jews in Music demonstrates that Wagner was indeed anti-Semitic. Gottfried fails however to marshal much evidence to demonstrate that the operas themselves are anti-Semitic. One must turn to other sources to explore the issue more thoroughly. The book is interesting as one man's story of his life, his work, and his relations with a somewhat cold family. It would have benefited from more information about his relatives and more concrete evidence of the anti-Semitism in Wagner's operas. The translation by Della Couling is so good that I was seldom conscious of reading a translation. |
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