Re: Wagner and friends

[Eliott Kahn <Elkahn...>]

Dear Mr. Jacobowitz:

I believe you are throwing a lot of ideas around and making a grand bunch of 
assumptions based on your own opinions.

Comments below:


At 11:58 AM 2/26/03 -0800, you wrote:
>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. 

How does it have specifically Wagner's stamp? Anti-semitism was extremely 
prevalent in late-19th, early-20th century France, Germany, and Austria. Yes, 
he was a virulent anti-semite and so was a substantial part of the populations 
of these countries. Witness the Dreyfus Affair in France, Mayor Karl Lueger's 
Vienna, and much anti-Semitic literature published by nineteenth-century German 
intellectuals--Karl Marx among them.

>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 earlier ideas of racial superiority were promulgated by a Frenchman, Joseph 
Gobineau (1816-1882), as early as 1853.


>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. 

It might have been fin de sicle decadence, however was it any more "decadent" 
or dangerous than the primitivist ideas before WWI? The manifesto of the 
Italian Futurist painters embraced war. Picasso's embrace of the African 
"primitive" and the early twentieth-century Expressionist "sceam of the soul" 
were, I believe,  all precursors to the "War to End All Wars." These 
ideas--combined with excessive nationalism in ALL European countries--set the 
twentieth century on its bloody course.


>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?

I do not understand your point. Arnold Schoenberg--a Jew--developed the 
twelve-tone theory of pitch organization. Does that make him an even bigger 
antiSemite than Wagner.

>The sycophantic relationship with Ludwig II was
>a perfect model for the hero-worship the Wagner
>family later held toward Hitler.

If you want to make such a grandiose statement--which appears to me just your 
own analogy--please substantiate it. 


>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.

Whose music? Hitler's? Again, please substantiate how one human being's music 
could enact genocide? Did the quarter note rests pick up eighth notes and slash 
people with them? While I agree that ideas can be the most dangerous things on 
earth, I suggest you read some of the late-nineteenth century, German 
anti-semitic literature. Some of it was written by Wagner's son-in-law, Houston 
Stewart Chamberlain--in Britain, I believe. One human being--even Hitler or 
Wagner--cannot lead an entire society unless they are inculcated with these 
ideas. And these anti-Semitic ideas had taken strong hold in central Europe by 
the late-nineteenth, early-twentieth century.


>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?

What on earth do you mean here?

Eliott Kahn


>Alex Jacobowitz  
>
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