The revaluation

Brigitte Hamann on Winifred Wagner

Should the history of the Wagner clan be rewritten? Historian Brigitte Hamann speaks out on the theses defended in her new book "Winifred Wagner oder Hitlers Bayreuth"

Interview : Dieter David Scholz

Ms. Hamann, your book pictures Winifred Wagner in all her contradictions. Which of these seem particularly important to you?

Every person is contradictory, that’s my conviction as a historian. It would be too short-sighted to condemn Winifred wholesale, as has long been the case. The astonishing thing about her is that, on the one hand, she always repeated the well-known anti-Semitic slogans out of loyalty to her husband, and on the other hand, she selflessly stood up for many people who were politically and racially persecuted, especially for many gays. And she stood up for them with Hitler without any calculation if you please, also without any self-interest. I have checked all the cases, and new ones have always turned up in the archives. She made a personal case for everyone. In doing so, she accepted the anger of Hitler and ultimately the loss of Hitler's favor, who avoided her from 1940 onward, and that was the worst thing that could have happened to her.

Was the contradictory Winifred Wagner, who on the one hand liberated concentration camp inmates, on the other hand confessed to be a convinced National Socialist until the end of her life, was she a typical person of that time? Or did she only selectively perceive the reality of National Socialism?

I do not believe that Winifred perceived reality selectively. She saw things very clearly as they were. But she believed in Hitler and idealized him, even took him into protection against his own cruelties. She believed that the Führer had been poisoned, so he could not have been responsible for the terrible atrocities.

You were the first to make it known to the public that Wieland Wagner, the rehabilitator and renewer of post-war Bayreuth, who after 1945 styled himself as a clean-up man, had a not inconsiderable Nazi past.

He was the chief Nazi of Bayreuth in the forties, that has to be said bluntly and clearly, and he was it until the end of April 1945. Then he acted as if he had never been it. He then withdrew to Lake Constance, to the French-occupied zone, where he was not known, and there he deliberately evaded denazification, which he succeeded in doing. His mother Winifred then took all the blame on herself in order to clear the way for her sons to make a new start. And Wieland visibly distanced himself from his mother, for example by building a high wall across the garden between the bombed Wahnfried house where he lived and the Siegfried Wagner house where his mother lived. He always publicly distanced himself from the National Socialist Wagner cult of his mother. Let me tell you this: it will change our image of the known Nazis and anti-Nazis tremendously, when a whole series of archives will be accessible.

How did festival director Wolfgang Wagner behave?

He supported me very much, he even had the idea that I should deal with his mother as a historian by inviting me to a lecture a few years ago, which I did not give because I did not know enough about Winifred at that time. But I became more and more involved with her and found that her example could be used to continue the account of Hitler's path that I presented in my last book. I then spent four years in the archives, especially in the Richard Wagner Archive in Bayreuth, and Wolfgang Wagner helped me quite decisively. Not only did he provide me with a lot of material, he also personally intervened on several occasions to make things available to me that I would not otherwise have been able to get hold of. For example, the diaries of the former archivist Gertrud Strobel were blocked by the city of Bayreuth. Wolfgang made sure that I was still allowed to read them. I got to know him as the most open and uncomplicated of the Wagner family. Bad are the grandchildren of Winifred. They prevent real enlightenment work in Bayreuth. Why should I howl with the wolves when my experiences are different? I did not get access to the correspondence between Winifred and Wieland, nor to Wieland's estate, of course. Both are with the grandchildren. I have tried everything. But they will probably never hand over the revealing documents to the public.

Would the history of the Bayreuth Festival have been different if Winifred had not run it?

Well, who else could have run it? Siegfried was too weak, he was organizationally not able to cope with the enormous tasks of the company, that's why he always pushed his wife ahead in delicate matters. In 1933, the Bayreuth Festival was on the verge of ruin; Winifred could no longer pay the salaries by the middle of the year. She managed to mobilize Hitler's help. She actually saved the festival, and with the help of Tietjen, who the Nazis did not like at all because he was considered a leftist and a modernist Jew lover, she modernized it to a very high level. She also succeeded in ensuring that the party did not interfere in any way with her artistic concerns. And that happened to only a few theater directors at the time.

So was Winifred better than her reputation?

Look, better or worse, that's not interesting to me as a historian. She certainly was was more complex than I originally thought. But I don't want to rehabilitate Winifred. This woman has repulsive traits in her brutality and crudeness. But she was never brutal towards the weaker and towards subordinates! Only upwards she was an iron lady. And with her determination and realism she ultimately saved the Bayreuth Festival for the future, which was in a serious existential crisis in the thirties because the Jewish Wagnerians and also the conservative Old Wagnerians stayed away. It also showed the problems of its time in a very pointed way. And that is of course interesting for me as a historian.

Source : Dieter David Scholz, © Opernwelt, september/october 2002

Originally published in the printedition of Leidmotief, october 2002. Translation: J. Hermans