Wagner: Race and Revolution

260 Pages·1992·14.235 MB·English

by  Paul Lawrence Rose

BOSTON PUBLIC UBRARY
Copley Square
WAGNER
Race and revolution
by the same author
THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE OF MATHEMATICS
BODIN AND THE GREAT GOD OF NATURE
SELECTED WRITINGS OF JEAN BODIN ON PHILOSOPHY,
RELIGION AND POLITICS (editor)
HEINE’S HISTORY OF RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY (editor)
ARCHIVES OF THE HOLOCAUST: THE HECHT ARCHIVE (editor)
REVOLUTIONARY ANTISEMITISM IN GERMANY FROM KANT TO WAGNER
WAGNER
Race and Revolution
PAUL LAWRENCE ROSE
Yale University Press
New Haven and London
Published in the United States
by Yale University Press and in
the United Kingdom by Paber and
Faber Limited
Photoset by Parker Typesetting Service, Leicester
Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic
All rights reserved
©
Paul Lawrence Rose, 1992
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any
form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 ofthe U.S. Copyright
Law and except for reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the
publishers.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library'.
Library ofCongress catalogue card number; 92-53588
International standard book number: 0-300—05182-4 (cloth)
0-300-06745-3 (pbk.)
3579 8642
10
As ever, for Susan
Digitized by the Internet Archive
2017 with funding from
in
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/wagnerOOpaul
11
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ix
INTRODUCTION The Problem: The Two Wagners
i
The German Revolution and the Birth ofa New Antisemitism 6
1
Fichte’s Legacy 6
Fichte’s Heirs
1
2 Wagner’s Early Revolutionism 1813-47 23
The Young German
23
The Romantic Nationalist 27
The Young Hegelian 28
The Heinean
3
A Normal Revolutionary Antisemite
35
Wagner Turns on Meyerbeer: The Struensee and Rienzi
3
Scandals of 1847 40
‘An alien element in German literary life’ 40
‘The tendency ofthe time to sink into utter worthlessness’ 44
4 An Epiphany: Revolutionism and Antisemitism 1848-9 49
The Revolutionary Faith:jfesus and ‘Judaism’ 50
Revolutionaries: Feuerbach, Rockel, Bakunin, Proudhon 58
Race and Revolutionism in the Ring 66
5 Revolutionary Antisemitism 1849-50: ‘Judaism in Music’ 73
Meyerbeer and Paris Revisited, 1849-50 74
‘Judaism in Music’ 78
6 A New Dream ofRevolution 1850-64: Schopenhauer
and Aryan Christianity 89
9
11
A New German Politics 1864-76: German Culture and
7
German 102
Politics
8 Apologizing for Wagner: Wagner’sJewish Friends and the
Antisemitic Petition 1
1
The ‘House-Jews’: Levi, Tausig, Rubinstein 1 19
The Breaking ofBerthold Auerbach 1 24
The Antisemitic Petition and Angelo Neumann 128
9 Regeneration and Redemption 1876-83 135
Race and Regeneration: Darwin, Gleizes and Gobineau 136
Aryan Christianity in the Regeneration Writings 4
1
Parsifal and the Racial Revolution 158
10 Looking Back 170
An Operatic Career 170
A
Revolutionary Career
1 73
11 Looking Forward 177
Revolutionary Destruction, Revolutionary Redemption 177
The Revolutionary Racial Redeemer 8
1
APPENDIX A Berthold Auerbach: ‘Richard Wagner and the
Self-respect oftheJews’
1 85
APPENDIX B Wagner in Israel 189
NOTES
193
FURTHER READING
233
INDEX
235