Stephan Mickisch was one of the very few within the cultural world who had the courage to denounce the corona scam. It soon brought him into the crosshairs of the leftist thought police. The reckoning followed according to the well-tried procedure for dissenters: stigmatize, ostracize, destroy. Two years later, it should now be clear to everyone that he was right and that his assailants who drove him to an act of desperation deserve our contempt.
There is no doubt that Stephan Mickisch, who provided added value for visitors to the Bayreuther Festspiele for 15 years as an expert lecturer to the afternoon performances, had a very thorough knowledge of Wagner and his work. The best document attesting to this is the DVD box set "The World of the Ring" published by DG. On this occasion, Erich Schulz parked his Unitel cameras for three days at Mickisch's house during Wagner Year 2013 to record the most extensive lecture on The Ring that the pianist had ever undertaken. Mickisch demonstrates primarily how dramatically meaningful Wagner's music is constructed. How he tickles and flogs the piano, seamlessly transitioning from Wagner to Verdi, Puccini, Beethoven and Strauss with excerpts that narrate a similar scene in the same key, is perhaps the cleverest part of his performance.
On Feb. 17, 2021, Mickisch died in his hometown of Schwandorf at the age of 58 under circumstances that have not yet been clarified. In his last Facebook post, he speaks enthusiastically about his latest plans. Nothing suggests that he was depressed, although social media rarely offer an insight into one's own misery. Still, insiders seem to suggest it was a suicide. As a Wagner, Strauss and Beethoven exegete, he obviously needed an audience. Like many others, he undoubtedly experienced the corona restrictions as a deep isolation that perhaps increasingly exhausted him.
But his criticism of corona folly went far beyond this personal discomfort. Under the heading "Corona-fascism," he posted on Facebook on April 2020 : "Undoubtedly, after the Greta idiocy, worse came our way: corona-fascism. This means the abolition of the former fundamental rights, destruction of the already very limited democracy and freedom of the citizens, strengthening of the political-bureaucratic apparatus, strengthening of all (always state-dependent) civil servants, strengthening of docile, well-paid court cliques = secretaries of state, ministry officials, many members of parliament, well-paid professors, most of whom show no quality, then : further extortion, especially of the industrious, further destruction of education and culture, de-humanization, de-individualization. MASKS, increasing surveillance of all by few, suppression of dissent, further automation and digitalization = dehumanization, further numbing = globalization, further regulation and bureaucratic rule. The goal - in addition to financial plunder "for the good of the people" - is mandatory vaccinations (for which you have to pay, by the way), then "chipping" for health checks. For those who do not participate, re-education camps are created (which have been around for 20 years because of the media) , for the die hards admissions to psychiatry will follow."
When he stepped into the shoes of anti-Nazi activist Hans Scholl (the White Rose) in December 2020 by posting a quote from Scholl ("Nothing is so unworthy of a civilised nation as allowing itself to be governed without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct") on Facebook, some cultural bureaucrats had had enough. Before long, Sven Friedrich, the director of the Museum Villa Wahnfried in Bayreuth responded with a letter of condemnation addressed to the pianist with whom he said he was friends : "My doubts increased, however, to the extent that you began to turn more and more to obscurantist esotericism, the circle around you took on an increasingly sectarian character, and finally, in connection with Wagner's anti-Semitism, you also allowed yourself to be publicly drawn into highly questionable, even borderline political statements, which were already apt to cast doubt on your state of mind. Actually, you had crossed the Rubicon by then. Now the comparison quoted below is not even distasteful, but repulsive! By making Hans Scholl's words your own in the current context of the Corona pandemic, you not only desecrate the memory of one of the few contemporaries in the 20th century of whom we can be proud, but you also misuse him as an alleged witness for the intellectual scum of the present age, with whom you so collude and align yourself. And by doing so, you place our government on a par with the Nazi regime. In a mixture of sadness and anger, I hereby withdraw ... the confidential 'you' from you and declare you persona non grata in the House of Wahnfried!"
Sven Friedrich announced the termination of the friendship and the restraining order not only privately, but also on Facebook for general reading. He confirmed his distancing to the Nordbayerischer Kurier with the statement that he, Friedrich, had to face the "organized madness" - as if Stefan Mickisch had not been an isolated, possibly psychologically damaged and lonely person, but the head of a powerful organization.
You don't have to be a genius to see how, with the snap of a finger, our governments had eroded our fundamental rights and declared the police state on the authority of unelected virologists who do nothing more than carry out the agenda of the WEF, WHO and Big Pharma. That is what Mickisch denounced and also the 1 million compatriots who rallied in Berlin on August 28, 2020.
In his letter Friedrich focuses on the eternal two taboo subjects: National Socialism and the Holocaust. Mickisch had previously set out to exonerate Richard Wagner to some extent from the charge of anti-Semitism. For him, Wagner's criticism of Jews was by no means racist but culturally determined. Some obituaries still found it necessary to accuse the pianist of trivializing the Holocaust. However, he never did. Such is the extent of the virtue signaling of visible actors in the cultural field within the re-education asylum called Germany, especially when it comes to the eternal taboos. This BR broadcast of June 24, 2013 probably accounts for the termination of the cooperation with the Festival as a lecturer in 2014. Judge for yourself whether a Rubicon is crossed here. [The video has since been removed]
The mainstream science that managed our lockdowns was full of nonsense. After all the accusations in the media and the stigma of deranged conspiracy thinker, it must have been clear to Mickisch that even after corona he would hardly be able to regain his old life with and in front of an audience. The disavowal from Bayreuth must surely have hit him hard. Why did Mickisch have to be dealt with so harshly? There are other cases where someone openly identified with the White Rose and downplayed the Holocaust, but evoked nowhere near such reactions as with Stefan Mickisch. Roger Hallam, for example, founder of the "Extinction Rebellion" climate sect. He made his alleged similarity to the White Rose and the comparison of climate change to the Holocaust known not to a fairly small audience on Facebook, but to a fairly large audience in Der Spiegel. Scholl's quote, while pronounced in the context of the Nazi regime, also stands very well on its own.
In short, this is a Bayreuth that does not tolerate the truth, a temple of political correctness, that tries to pretend to be morally superior to its Founder, disregards freedom of speech and clearly shows that it has still not processed the post-war trauma. Until this situation is defused by the healing power of truth, Wagner's Testament will continue to provide explosive material. In short, this is a Bayreuth I no longer can or wish to defend, and I know a Freethinker who no doubt turned over in his grave once again this week. Or as Markus Gärtner puts it in the video below : "Shame on all of you who contributed to this."
Censorship - along with extreme intellectual conformity - is a reliable signal that a society is lapsing into totalitarianism. The way out of this horror, as Mattias Desmet states in "The Psychology of Totalitarianism ", is to stand up and keep speaking the truth. Rest in peace, Stefan Mickisch!