Prof. Dr. Udo Bermbach wears the heart on the left, something he regularly hints at during the interview.
Wagner, even more so than Mendelssohn, was politicized from the very beginning...
Wagner was never just a musician, but always saw himself as a homo politicus and as such sharply rejected politics. At the end of his life he developed strong reservations against political parties, parliamentarism and democracy. With his worldview, he was probably one of the most effective political thinkers among Germans. In addition, the history of the Bayreuth Festival resembles a seismograph of political developments in Germany. The Festival, from its inaugural event in 1876, has always been closely linked to the political elites, first in the Kaiserreich, then in the Weimar Republic with the political right-wing opposition, and from 1933 onwards, as it were, in its fusion with the Hitler state. From 1951 onward, there was then the problem of having to break away from this past again and establish something completely new - which, as we know, was only achieved with difficulty.
How can it be explained that - with around 50 Wagner publications per year - the reception history and the research gaps you have pointed out have been able to exist for so long?
There was already a first attempt to sporadically evaluate the "Bayreuther Blätter" at the beginning of the seventies. Later, individual aspects such as anti-Semitism and racism were addressed. But a systematic evaluation did not take place. I believe that there is a trivial, quite practical explanation for this: This journal is almost nowhere completely available in Germany. The Wagner Archive in Bayreuth has it, of course, but in all of northern Germany, for example, it cannot be found complete in any library. The average circulation was only 700 copies, and most of the private stock was probably destroyed during the war. I was lucky enough to be able to buy a complete copy at an auction in Hamburg a few years ago by chance. That helped me decisively. In addition, the reading is tedious, the material has been gladly left aside as right-wing extremist and NS-suspicious and thus intellectually not very productive. And moreover, most Wagner interpreters thought they knew about it.
The subtitle of your book is "Reception - Falsifications. Are the two terms mutually dependent?
In a certain sense, yes. In his decisive creative phase, Wagner was definitely a political leftist in his own right; he was close friends with the anarchist Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, who was wanted worldwide, for more than a year; he had friends who were on the barricades in Dresden in 1848. He did not flee to Zurich by chance, because this city was the place where many German revolutionaries fled to, for example, after the dissolution of the Frankfurt National Assembly. Switzerland was liberal, tolerant, and did not extradite. In Wagner's case, a certain continuity of his anarchistic thinking, directed against central institutions such as the state and the church, can be seen right up to the end of his life. However, if one looks at the major Wagner biographies and examines how this period of exile in Zurich, which was very central to Wagner's life, and the writings he produced there are dealt with, one is surprised to find that until the 1950s in the Federal Republic of Germany, this central political experience, which was also highly consequential for the works, was predominantly pushed aside.
Why?
People, especially in Bayreuth, did not want to establish Wagner as a left-wing revolutionary; they wanted to suppress his left-wing past. There were also practical reasons for this, such as the fact that a lot of money was needed for the construction of the Festspielhaus and the ongoing operation of the festival. This, in turn, was not obtained from workers and small employees, whom Wagner had originally wanted to bring into the Festspielhaus, but from the financially strong elites from politics and business. It is basically a serious omission on the part of the political left in Germany that it has left its most important composer on the right.
And that in the true sense of the word. The 'Bayreuth Doctrine' has almost made Wagner a substitute for religion.
For Wagner himself, this 'Bayreuth doctrine' was not unambiguous and certainly characterized by strong ambivalences. The religious aspect is closely related to "Parsifal", which from the beginning was perceived by the die-hard Wagnerians as a kind of Christian liturgy on the Bayreuth stage, which was reinforced by the subtitle "Bühnenweihfestspiel". Around 1912, there is documentation in which "Parsifal" was elevated to the status of a church service by Protestant clergymen. The Wagnerians gratefully took this up and stylized the Bayreuth stage more and more into a temple. That was not enough. This sacralization was transferred to the Wagner works as a whole, especially to the "Meistersinger," which were understood in a 'sacral' nationalistic sense.
Did the ideological shift among the members of the Bayreuth Circle already begin in the twenties?
It is a mixture of different components that brewed over the years and increasingly radicalized the Wagner reception to the right. The people of this circle mourned the collapse of the empire, they were against democratization, against parliamentarism - similar to Wagner in his late years. In addition, they wanted to defend German culture, as they understood it, against the degenerated Western civilization. The idea that the Germans defined their national identity through their culture, i.e., their literature, art, and especially their music, has a long tradition, however, that goes back far into the 18th century, because before 1871 the Germans never lived together in a politically unified state, which, however, they always wanted. The culturally understood national identity led in the Bayreuth Circle, among other things, to the view that through Wagner's music and worldview, 'dirty' politics could be overcome and - as Wagner called it - an "aesthetic world order" could be introduced. This conviction was combined with nationalistic-antidemocratic, even racist views. The Bayreuth Circle was a collection of intellectuals - among them professors, literary figures, publicists, musicologists - who found their home in this conservative-reactionary political spectrum and tried to make Bayreuth the forerunner of all these ideas; of a regeneration idea that said the German people had to fundamentally renew themselves, more thoroughly than in any revolution, since revolutions always change only the political superstructure.
There is this provocative word by Thomas Mann, according to which there is "a lot of Hitler in Wagner. You devote a separate chapter to this problem. Would you agree with Mann, or was Wagner rather used?
Although the subject matter is complicated, I tend more toward the latter. The spectacular, the theatrical, the urge to want to represent oneself again and again - these are elements that suggest a connection, especially since politics in the Third Reich - as Walter Benjamin analyzed it early on - was to be 'aestheticized'. Hitler repeatedly emphasized that he recognized no other mastermind than Wagner. But: Hitler fitted Wagner - both as a historical figure and in his ideological convictions - into his own worldview, based exclusively on his subjective interpretations. The claim that Wagner's anti-Semitism stimulated Hitler is more than doubtful, since Hitler never mentioned Wagner in connection with anti-Semitism.
You refute the general assertion that there was a completely new beginning in Bayreuth after the war. Rather, the focus was on continuity.
Just as in the politics of the first years of the Federal Republic. There was no Stunde Null, neither in Germany nor in Bayreuth. The bombed-out, destroyed country was dependent on people who were competent and had survived. It was no different in politics and economics than in culture. People relied on those who seemed suitable for the job. I have looked through the program booklets of the Bayreuth Festival from 1951 to 1976, and here this conviction of the time is reflected: In the early years - until the end of the fifties, beginning of the sixties - the majority were formerly convinced Nazi authors. Some of them had been so fanatical that they propagated National Socialism long before 1933 and actively participated in its construction - Curt von Westernhagen, for example.
Who hired these authors?
The program booklets state that the festival management, i.e. Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner, were responsible. However, since Wolfgang Wagner was more responsible for the organization, Wieland Wagner was probably responsible for the engagement of the program authors. Amazing, because he knew them all from the years of the Third Reich and before. Of course, after 1951 they no longer dealt with the race and Jewish question, but turned to politically unsuspicious topics such as Wagner's reception of the Greeks. But the fact that Wieland Wagner did not manage to attract new, unencumbered authors very quickly is a fact that gives pause for thought.
When did the democratization of the festival begin, also with regard to the audience?
I believe that the Chéreau "Ring" (1976-1980) signifies a certain caesura, also directors like Harry Kupfer or Götz Friedrich. Their Bayreuth works and the opening of the program to authors such as Bloch, Adorno, Hans Mayer - which was also brought about by Wieland Wagner - in a way opened the festival to a more liberal and left-leaning audience, and this opening has remained to this day. At the latest since Chéreau, there is no longer any special political position of Bayreuth as far as this aspect is concerned. Bayreuth arrived, as it were, in a democracy at that time.