Re: Last Word on Wagner?

[Alex J. Lubet <lubet001...>]

Seems like folks named Alex have a tendency to get these things right.
Anti-Semitism was, of course, a major theme of our conference, too, which
brought scholars of Wagner's anti-Semitism together with music theorists in
what Gottfried Wagner, our keynote speaker, called a first of its kind.

You were also wise to quote Mark Twain.  If I may also, he said of Wagner's
music, It's better than it sounds!



Alex Jacobowitz wrote:

> B"H Munich
>
> To paraphrase Mark Twain: Innocence is another word
> for amnesia.
>
> For all those who profess to believe
> that Wagner wasn´t an anti-Semite, that
> Wagner´s music has nothing to do with
> Hitler and the Nazi movement, or that Wagner´s
> music is only music, please know that
> here in Germany, in 1999, at the
> Castle Elmenau, a symposium took place
> entitled: Richard Wagner and the Third Reich.
> One of the main scholars to present papers
> on the topic was no less than Saul Friedlander,
> and all the papers presented at the symposium
> were published in book form.
>
> Is anybody - especially from this list - willing
> to stand on their electronic stump to proclaim
> to the world there was no need for this symposium, no
> need to bother international scholars, no need
> to publish? Or any of the other books on the
> Wagner-Hitler continuum? Or the books by
> the Wagner family?
>
> Believe what you may, but there is a stellar
> difference between a simple
> anti-Semite, (take him or leave him) and someone
> whose shadow actually crosses the darkest designs
> of the Holocaust, and who may be seen as one of
> the earliest German annihilationist (Goldhagen´s term)
> anti-Semites and writers. For any of you not yet
> versed in Wagner´s "Das Judenthum in Musik", there is
> SOME controversy as to Wagner really wanted the
> destruction of the Jewish people, or "only" that the
> Jews should sacrifice everything that made them
> Jewish, (clothes, language, religion, music) for the
> sake of creating a new European.
>
> However, the final line sums it up - Wagner mentions
> the Ahasvers (Ahasverosh) solution, the Untergang
> (destruction) of the Jews.
>
> Since Purim is coming, perhaps we could do well
> to remember the mitzva of remembering what Amalek
> did to us, and that in every generation someone
> will rise to try to destroy us.
>
> Again, to paraphrase Mark Twain:
> Innocence is another word for amnesia.
>
> A freilacher Purim, yidn!
>
> Alex Jacobowitz
>
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--
Alex Lubet, Ph. D.
Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Music
Adjunct Professor of American and Jewish Studies
Head, Division Of Composition and Music Theory
University of Minnesota
2106 4th St. S
Minneapolis, MN 55455
612 624-7840 612 624-8001 (fax)


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