Re: Wagner and friends

[Alex Jacobowitz <alexbjacobowitz...>]

B"H Munich

Yes, we´ve heard all this before, mostly
from non-Jews who don´t know better, and
occasionally from Jews who should.

"Hitler liked dogs, too"...

or

"Hitler was a vegetarian" or some such drivel.

Back to square one. Nazi is short for
national socialist, and though that party (unlike
the Austrian anti-Semitic party)
wasn´t created until forty years after Wagner´s death,
it has Wagner´s stamp all over it. Wagner fought
French ideals (Liberty, Fraternity, Equality - in
short, equal rights) all his life, and cherished
the development and proliferation of Germanness in
all things - literature, music, culture.

The Nietzsche case is quite different - his ideas
were absolutely clearly misused by the Nazis, and
you would have to read him out of all context to
miscontrue him as the founder of the Übermensch
in a Nazi sense. But Wagner - his life, his writings,
philosophy, music - all bespeak late German
Romanticism, leaning toward decadence. Need we
discuss the chromaticism of the Tristan theme, when
only one-hundred thirty years earlier Bach had
codified tonality in the Well-Tempered Clavier?
The sycophantic relationship with Ludwig II was
a perfect model for the hero-worship the Wagner
family later held toward Hitler.

When Hitler talked about the Niedergang (decline) of
the Jews, what did you think he was talking about?
Quite literally, the disappearance of the Jews as
Jews. What on earth did that have to do with his
music, you may ask? E V E R Y T H I N G.

By the way, after Wagner got religion toward the
end of his life (an act for which Nietzsche never
forgave him, he still created an anti-Semitic
character in Parsifal. Wanna plumb the dark side
of musical psychology? Go ahead.

The concept of Lebensraum sounded good to German
ears at one time, too. Why get sucked into that
vortex? Do you think you´ll do a kiddush hashem that
way?

Alex Jacobowitz  

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