A night at the opera: Adolf Hitler with Winifred Wagner, the daughter-in-law of Richard Wagner

4,022 words

Part 4 of 4

Wagner and National Socialist Germany

Richard Wagner has long been reviled by Jews as the intellectual and spiritual precursor to Adolf Hitler who, according to William Shirer, once declared: “Whoever wants to understand National Socialist Germany must know Wagner.”[1] (more…)

Arno Breker, Bust of Richard Wagner

2,360 words

Part 3 of 4

Wagner’s Music Dramas as Coded Anti-Semitism

T. W. Adorno and Wagner biographer Robert Gutman began a modern Jewish intellectual tradition (more…)

3,016 words

Part 2 of 4

Wagner’s Racial Thinking

In addition to his concern about the baleful Jewish influence on German culture, Wagner, under the influence of Darwinism and the French racial theorist Arthur de Gobineau, became increasingly concerned about the fate of the White race generally. (more…)

Richard Wagner, 1813–1883

4,763 words

Part 1 of 4

Richard Wagner was a one man artistic and intellectual movement whose shadow fell across all of his contemporaries and most of his successors. Other composers had influence; Wagner had a way of thinking named after him. It has been claimed that “never since Orpheus has there been a musician whose music affected so vitally the life and art of generations.”[1]  (more…)