Well, we might as well agree to disagree.
Maybe not many people read Wagner's essay, but it was crystal clear from he beginning that the Wagner dynasty was in favour of Hitler's nazi ideology, which consisted not only from antisemitism, but mostly from Germanic nationalism, of which Wagner was a huge advocate.
In his book Wagner and Philosophy, Bryan Magee tells us that:
"Those of my readers who know Wagner only by his reputation may be surprised at the portrait I have presented so far of a left-wing revolutionary writing the libretto of The Ring while in political exile in Switzerland. The image of Wagner that floats about at large in our culture does not accord with this. He is thought of as quintessentially right-wing, a pillar of the German establishment, jingoistically nationalistic, a racialist and an anti-semite, a sort of proto-Nazi."
Magee goes on to succinctly explain the discrepancy between the populist stereotypes about Wagner, and his own portrait of Wagner as a liberal revolutionary, by explaining the background to European revolutionary nationalism in the nineteenth century:
"There are many reasons for the discrepancy. One is that certain attitudes possess inescapably right-wing associations for those of us who are embarking on the twenty-first century that did not have these associations in the nineteenth century. Nationalism is an outstanding example."
During Wagner's time, nationalism had none of the right-wing associations it has today:
"Throughout Central and Eastern Europe at the time when Wagner was young, nationalism was one of the great left-of-centre causes. This was notably so in Germany and Italy, neither of which had yet achieved unification. Political conservatives wanted to preserve the separateness of the smaller states that still existed, each with its own ruling elite and, usually, archaic institutions; radicals wanted to sweep away these little anciens regimes and create a unitary modern state with representative government. So the causes of modernity, representative institutions and individual liberty all marched together under the banner of national unification."
Magee rightly concludes:
"Verdi was as prominently active in their support in Italy as Wagner was in Germany. So while it is true that Wagner was always a German nationalist, it is not true that German nationalism was at that time a right-wing cause. Similarly with anti-semitism."
In the nineteenth century, the majority of European states were totalitarian regimes ruled by monarchs. In 1848 a republican pro-democratic revolution erupted in Germany, and the following year, in 1849, Richard Wagner, took up arms in the Dresden pro-democracy revolutionary uprisingalongside his friend Mikhail Bakunin (a key founder of Socialist Anarchism).
Later on in his life, Wagner openly denounced Bismarckian imperialist expansionism, dismissing Bismarck as the mere "caricature of a strong man" (Cosima Diaries 8th February, 1881). Wagner became an admirer of Constantin Frantz's views on European federalism, with independent nation-states loosely united under a constitution based on that of America. Wagner published an essay by Frantz in the July 1879 edition of the Bayreuther Blätter harshly criticising a Germany united under the "pointy tip of the Prussian sabre". Even as a late in his life as 1880 Wagner can still be seen to be writing favourably about socialism.
The view of Wagner as a German nationalist must also be tempered by a study of what Wagner actually wrote on the subject, even well after the 1848 revolutions. Long after the failure of the pro-democracy uprisings, since he only ever saw revolution end in failure, or even reversed under counter-revolutionaries like Louis Napoleon, Wagner had clearly grown weary of the idea of armed revolution. Under the influence of the Buddhist influenced Schopenhauer, he later became staunchly pacifist, an anti-vivisectionist vegetarian, while remaining a socialist who overtly denounced blatant nationalistic patriotism until the very end. This might come as a surprise to those used to the cartoon caricatures of Wagner that are stock-standard, but Wagner writes an essay entitled Concerning the State and Religion (1864) dedicated to King Ludwig of Bavaria, in which Wagner goes on something of a Wahn monologue of his own. Wagner writes:
"In political life, delusion [Wahn] expresses itself namely as patriotism. ... Injustice and violence against other states and peoples has hitherto been patriotism's only true manifestation of force."
The reason that we keep finding these insinuations that German nationalism had always been a proto-Nazi right-wing movement is because of the blindly unquestioning acceptance of Nazi propaganda which claimed that their movement was the culmination and pinnacle of the entirety of German history: Germans throughout all of history had it in their Blood and Destiny to be Nazis. To be a true German was to be a born Nazi, and to be a Nazi was to be German. A German who was not a Nazi, but instead a socialist, a pacifist, gay, a feminist, pro-democratic, or at all left-wing was, therefore, not a real "German" at all-but a Jew or one of their Judeo-Bolshevik co-conspirators.
This question of German national identity is one that is eloquently tackled by Sir Richard J. Evans in this highly recommended talk:
), give me proof. If that antisemitism in Wagner's operas is only because of an interpretation, I can say that I think I could provide an overview how Il Trovatore could, in similar manner, inspire Nazism or Holocaust. The possibility to interpret something in some particular way doesn't make it immediately an inherent quality of the work itself. I can interpret all kinds of innocent stuff and use it as an excuse or justification for immoral actions. This is my own misuse of the work, not a mistake of the author. Nazis did propaganda knowingly which gives me a reason to suspect that misinterpretations were used knowingly. I doubt neither Hitler nor politicians nowadays sincerely believe everything they say. As I said, I'm not quite sure Hitler had even read Wagner's essay.
