Twilight of the Wagners

Library Journal

Gottfried, the great-grandson of Richard, indulges himself with this opportunity to lash out at everybody who has ever done him wrong, reducing what could have been a fascinating family memoir to just another tale of a dysfunctional clan. The bad guys, especially Gottfried's father, Wolfgang, are mostly within the family. Beyond them, any art critic, musician, or politician that ever crossed Gottfried is always reduced to rage by a perfect comeback or Gottfried's righteous indignation. This autobiography strings together one anecdote after another, an exercise in intense navel gazing. It's a pity, for Wagner could have told a compelling story of the Bayreuth Festival's relationship to the Nazis, anti-Semitism, and postwar Germany, but he fails. Of interest to Wagner and opera scholars who want an inside view of Bayreuth's feuds; recommended for larger academic libraries with an extensive interest in music history or opera.--Randall L. Schroeder, Wartburg Coll. Lib., Waverly, IA

Kirkus Reviews

In his memoirs, prominent musicologist and stage director Wagner unveils the anti-Semitic sentiment that prevailed in his family ever since his illustrious great-grandfather, composer Richard Wagner, expressed his pathological Jew-hatred in his 1850 essay "Jews in Music." Born shortly after WWII into an influential family who singlehandedly managed the Bayreuth Wagner Festival, Gottfired began investigating German-Jewish relations and his family's Nazi past from an early age. This interest eventually made him an outcast among his relatives. Richard Wagner anticipated Hitler's Final Solution when he called for the restoration of the German Aryan race, pure of degenerative Jewish blood. Drawing on family letters and photographs, Gottfried uncovers his grandmother's close relationship with Hitler: Winifred was proud to have supplied an incarcerated Hitler with the paper on which he wrote Mein Kampf. Although she declined his marriage proposal, she remained the Führer's intimate friend and a dedicated Nazi Party member. As for Hitler, he found Wagner's chauvinistic ideas inspiring and his music a perfect background for military parades. We read precious little about Richard Wagner and the origins of his ideological stance, as the book mainly details the author's interaction with his family legacy. Gottfried takes us through a confrontation with his authoritative father, academic and family research, job searches, two marriages, and the adoption of a Romanian orphan. Gottfried's accomplishments include a doctoral thesis on Jewish-German composer Kurt Weill, whose works were condemned in Nazi Germany, opera productions in Europe and Turkey, and worldwide lectures on the Wagners. Inthe 1980s, his career took an odd twist when he tried his hand in banking. Thanks in large part to Gottfried's lecture tour in Israel, Richard Wagner's once-taboo music was played for the first time on Israeli radio in 1990. A disturbing examination of the great composer's legacy that sheds new light on a powerful clan and the persistence of Nazi ideology in postwar Germany.