The Case for Wagner in Israel

[Mark Stryker]

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/09/the-case-for-wagner-in-israel.html

I thought this was a compelling piece and spot-on. For what it's worth, I interviewed Barenboim in late 2001 shortly after the incident mentioned in Ross' piece. Here's a little bit more about it drawn from my own story from Barenboim's perspective.

Israel Festival officials in Jerusalem asked Barenboim not to play Wagner with the Berlin Staatskapelle orchestra. Depending upon whom you believe, Barenboim may or may not have acquiesced. But he surprised everyone at the end of the concert by asking the audience directly if it wanted to hear Wagner. After a contentious half-hour debate -- during which about 50 people left out of 1,000 -- the orchestra played the "Prelude and Liebestod" from "Tristan und Isolde."

"We finished, and the whole audience gave us a standing ovation," says Barenboim. "I left the stage feeling that everything had been very harmonious."

But Barenboim's actions ignited a firestorm the next day, drawing condemnations and accusations of insensitivity from festival officials and politicians. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said it was "perhaps too early" to play the music, given its Nazi entanglements. Barenboim vehemently cites the democratic ideal of free expression and notes that patrons were warned in advance and had the option of leaving. He also points out that Wagner's operas are heard on the radio in Israel and that some cell phones are programmed to play Wagner tunes when they ring.

Edited September 26, 2012 by Mark Stryker

[Larry Kart]

My two cents worth:

!) Wagner was a great composer -- duh.

2) Wagner not only was a dyed-in-the-wool anti-Semite but a crucial (as in highly influential) intellectual pioneer in what has been called Revolutionary anti-Semitism -- i.e. the movement that believed that the intellectual-spiritual fulfillment of the German people could be achieved only if and when all traces of Jewish influence, up and including the Jews themselves, were eliminated from German life. (Yes, I know about Wagner's friendly relations with certain Jewish conductors who were among his acolytes -- Wagner, like many people, was for himself on a selective basis, in addition to being passionately for and against other things).

3) Whether Wagner is played in Israel matters to whom and why? If I'm an Israeli music lover who wants to hear some Wagner -- OK; I play my records, turn on the radio, advocate that his music be played in public in Israel. On the other hand, the linkage between Wagner's music and Nazism is not incidental from either direction -- Wagner's views having crucially fueled Nazi ideology, the Nazi regime having used Wagner's music as a virtual theme song -- and I'm certainly not going to tell any Israeli with a long, accurate memory that he/she should just grow up and forget about all that. Further, this whole fuss seems to me like political arm-twisting of one sort or another. As for Alex Ross' final citation of Theodore Herzl as something of a Wagnerian, as though that settles anything -- I've always known that Ross was a toad, but this confirms it..

[AllenLowe]

get 'em Larry. Good answer.

[Mark Stryker]

My two cents worth:

!) Wagner was a great composer -- duh.

2) Wagner not only was a dyed-in-the-wool anti-Semite but a crucial (as in highly influential) intellectual pioneer in what has been called Revolutionary anti-Semitism -- i.e. the movement that believed that the intellectual-spiritual fulfillment of the German people could be achieved only if and when all traces of Jewish influence, up and including the Jews themselves, were eliminated from German life. (Yes, I know about Wagner's friendly relations with certain Jewish conductors who were among his acolytes -- Wagner, like many people, was for himself on a selective basis, in addition to being passionately for and against other things).

3) Whether Wagner is played in Israel matters to whom and why? If I'm an Israeli music lover who wants to hear some Wagner -- OK; I play my records, turn on the radio, advocate that his music be played in public in Israel. On the other hand, the linkage between Wagner's music and Nazism is not incidental from either direction -- Wagner's views having crucially fueled Nazi ideology, the Nazi regime having used Wagner's music as a virtual theme song -- and I'm certainly not going to tell any Israeli with a long, accurate memory that he/she should just grow up and forget about all that. Further, this whole fuss seems to me like political arm-twisting of one sort or another. As for Alex Ross' final citation of Theodore Herzl as something of a Wagnerian, as though that settles anything -- I've always known that Ross was a toad, but this confirms it..

I read the final citation less as an attempted definitive last word on the issue than a final ironic confirmation of how ellusive the meaning of Wagner remains and as a comment on the reductive cliches that inform too much discussion around a figure comprised of so many complexities and contradictions. I completely understand that there are some in Israel (or anywhere) for whom Wagner has horrific allusions and they should not have to listen to the music if they don't want to. But I do find the ban on his music in Israel laced with so many inconsistencies and hypocracies that it doesn't make sense.

Edited September 26, 2012 by Mark Stryker

[Big Wheel]

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Further, this whole fuss seems to me like political arm-twisting of one sort or another.

I'm not sure that this makes much sense. The issue of Wagner has obviously been "politicized" in Israel since pretty much forever; you can't put the genie back into the bottle. And any thoughtful discussion of whether to play Wagner in public in Israel has to pretty quickly start to address the question, "OK, what are some reasons we shouldn't play Wagner in Israel?" Are you saying those discussions just shouldn't be happening, or happening in public? Some people just aren't going to ever like the idea and will try to convince people that they're right. That's OK. And the people on the other side of the argument will do the same. That's OK too.

There's a difference between having empathy for the victims of persecution and making a persecution complex into national policy. Israel has been down this road before in other manifestations (the Eichmann trial, for example, wasn't just about bringing one high Nazi to justice; it was a Stonewall-like event that brought the idea of public discussion of the Holocaust out of the shadows, in a place where for the past 15 years these memories had basically been repressed for the sake of building a new country and making as clean as break as possible with the past.)

[Larry Kart]

Big Wheel: About "There's a difference between having empathy for the victims of persecution and making a persecution complex into national policy" -- sure, but how about the to my mind not unrelated issue of having your nose rubbed in it, which is how some Israelis feel about Wagner. About the political arm-twisting, acknowledging that 'the issue of Wagner has obviously been "politicized" in Israel since pretty much forever,' first, there's good reason for that IMO, as I said/explained in my first post, and, second, making this an issue from the other direction seems to me to be (in part, and on the part of some) an attempt to paint Israel as a uniquely/foolishly intolerant nation. So let the discussions happen to a fare thee well, but allow me to remain suspicious of the motives of some of the participants.

Mark: You meant "how elusive" and then, further down, "horrific allusions," no? In any case, about the "complexities and contradictions" of Wagner, when it came to the Jews, I think it's quite clear (as I said above) that he was close to some Jewish musicians who admired and could help him, and that as for the rest he was the among the godfathers of German Revolutionary anti-Semitism. That Wagnerism in one form or another cast a very wide social net in the late 19th Century is obvious, but I think that the breadth of his musical and social influence ought not to be used, as I think Alex Ross did by citing Herzl, to suggest that Wagner himself, in this one particular area of his thought, necessarily was a figure of comparable (i.e. comparable to his influence) breadth, complexity, or, if you will, diffuseness. Finally, speaking as a Jew who finds that he can't not afford to listen to Wagner's music, while I've sorted this out for myself in my own hand-to-mouth manner, I'm unwilling to tell that portion of the Israeli public that feels otherwise that they, by contrast, are inconsistent hypocrites. Should they change their minds on this, fine. Should they not, we'll all survive.

[Mark Stryker]

Big Wheel: About "There's a difference between having empathy for the victims of persecution and making a persecution complex into national policy" -- sure, but how about the to my mind not unrelated issue of having your nose rubbed in it, which is how some Israelis feel about Wagner. About the political arm-twisting, acknowledging that 'the issue of Wagner has obviously been "politicized" in Israel since pretty much forever,' first, there's good reason for that IMO, as I said/explained in my first post, and, second, making this an issue from the other direction seems to me to be (in part, and on the part of some) an attempt to paint Israel as a uniquely/foolishly intolerant nation. So let the discussions happen to a fare thee well, but allow me to remain suspicious of the motives of some of the participants.

Mark: You meant "how elusive" and then, further down, "horrific allusions," no? In any case, about the "complexities and contradictions" of Wagner, when it came to the Jews, I think it's quite clear (as I said above) that he was close to some Jewish musicians who admired and could help him, and that as for the rest he was the among the godfathers of German Revolutionary anti-Semitism. That Wagnerism in one form or another cast a very wide social net in the late 19th Century is obvious, but I think that the breadth of his musical and social influence ought not to be used, a I think Alex Ross did by citing Herzl, to suggest that Wagner himself, in this one particular area of his thought, necessarily was a figure of comparable (i.e. comparable to his influence) breadth, complexity, or, if you will, diffuseness. Finally, speaking as a Jew who finds that he can't not afford to listen to Wagner's music, while I've sorted this out for myself in my own hand-to-mouth manner, I'm unwilling to tell that portion of the Israeli public that feels otherwise that they, by contrast, are inconsistent hypocrites. Should they change their minds on this, fine. Should they not, we'll all survive.

I corrected the spellings above (a result of haste) -- thanks for the professional copy editing.

This line confused me: "That Wagnerism in one form or another cast a very wide social net in the late 19th Century is obvious, but I think that the breadth of his musical and social influence ought not to be used, a I think Alex Ross did by citing Herzl, to suggest that Wagner himself, in this one particular area of his thought, necessarily was a figure of comparable (i.e. comparable to his influence) breadth, complexity, or, if you will, diffuseness." Can you clarify?

Finally, I would say that as a Jew myself I also worked through these issues in a personal way. I avoided the music for a long time for reasons more political than not, but found eventually as I was learning the classical canon, that I had gone backward from the late 20th Century and forward from the 17th Century and suddenly there was this gigantic hole with a "W" on it in between the two stands of history and the only way to link them up was to deal with Wagner. Interestingly, in my house, my wife (a gentile, though she would prefer "heathen") can't listen to Wagner because of the anti-semitism and all the rest; but I can and do listen, though not all that often, but that's a matter of taste -- I prefer the Italians.

To clarify my use of the word hypocrite -- I am not calling any individual in Israel who prefers not to hear Wagner a hypocrite; but I do think it's hypocritical for a society -- or at the least disengenuous -- to draw such arbitrary and inconsistent lines when it comes to the ban. We can't hear the music in the concert hall, but it's ok on the radio and TV? And by what logic is "Ride of the Valkyries" offensive when an orchestra plays it live but it's not offensive when heard as a cell phone ring?

Edited September 26, 2012 by Mark Stryker

[robertoart]

Well perhaps on the radio and ipod Wagner is somehow distanced. A part of the disembodied digital world. In the concert hall the music takes on a certain kind of psychic-corporeality perhaps. This really is another tangent on how you deal with the dilemma of separating the art from the artist. And where do you draw the line. In the case of antisemitism - and the 'European canon' - who out of anyone that wasn't a Jew didn't harbour deep seated and ingrained cultural and personal aversion to Jews as a people. Probably not many. It was part of the collective consciousness, far beyond just the Germanic culture. That Hitler loved Wagner, and Wagner had a known social text of antisemitism, made him the perfect fit to be the musical poetry for the Holocaust. It also makes him a good symbol for contemporary Jews to use as a cultural focus to 'maintain the rage'. Hitler also loved Rembrandt, who, chances are, may have been just as antisemitic as Wagner.

Edited September 27, 2012 by freelancer

[Blue Train]

Wagner was a bigot.

But just how much music would any of us be listening to based on what the musicians said or did?

[Blue Train]

If you never heard anything played by Miles Davis. Would anyone want to listen to him if you just heard about his history with women?

I heard Max Roach beat Abbey Lincoln.

[Chuck Nessa]

My favorite Wagner recordings are by "jewish" conductors.

[AllenLowe]

Max and Miles could be bad guys, but I wouldn't quite compare them to a leading theoretician of the Holocaust.

[Stefan Wood]

Wagner indirectly killed 8 million Jews? This is news to me.

Edited September 27, 2012 by Stefan Wood

[Blue Train]

Max and Miles could be bad guys, but I wouldn't quite compare them to a leading theoretician of the Holocaust.

I think you're missing my point, or I wasn't clear enough on my main point. It's the internet after all. There are a lot of great musicians/composers that did a lot of "Bad/Evil" stuff in their time. If everyone based things on that....just how much music would most people be listening to right now?

Wagner was a leading theoretician of the Holocaust?

As someone who has family members who are Jewish that had members who either died, or survived....I understand why those who were in Dachau can't bear to hear his music, or anyone who is Jewish doesn't want to listen to his music.

However, isn't calling Wagner a leading theoretician of the Holocaust a major stretch?

Wouldn't his son-in-law Houston Stewart Chamberlain (I don't think you can make up that last name in relation to this up.) be a better choice if you're going to bring up anything Wagner related? If I am not mistaken a man if I believed in hell....should be in the worst possible place even made friends with his children.

I know this is the internet and all, but I have no problem being corrected on this subject. It's still Yom Kippur in some places....I didn't mean any offense at all on this subject.

If I have....I apologize.

Edited September 27, 2012 by Blue Train

[Stefan Wood]

Don't apologize. We pick and choose which artist we favor or dislike, regardless of their character. But I have issues when we try to hold them to a higher moral standard that may not apply because it was a different time, different set of rules, and different ideological and intellectual battles that were happening.

Edited September 27, 2012 by Stefan Wood

[Larry Kart]

This line confused me: "That Wagnerism in one form or another cast a very wide social net in the late 19th Century is obvious, but I think that the breadth of his musical and social influence ought not to be used, a I think Alex Ross did by citing Herzl, to suggest that Wagner himself, in this one particular area of his thought, necessarily was a figure of comparable (i.e. comparable to his influence) breadth, complexity, or, if you will, diffuseness." Can you clarify?

It's pretty simple, I think, but perhaps an analogy would help. Let's say that Albert Einstein was who he was as a physicist and as influence on general Western thought (think of the meaning his theories gave to the notion of "relativity" in many spheres of activity and indeed to our idea of man's place in the universe) but that he also had particular views about the Jews that were identical to Wagner's and had, as I believe Wagner did, a profound influence on the course of anti-Semitism. Now, if someone were talking about the nature and influence of my imaginary Einstein's anti-Semitism, it would be IMO egregious to somehow try to "normalize" that side of the man by citing both Einstein's undeniable eminence as a physicist and the broad influence his scientific theories had on the culture as a whole and on specific members of that culture (a la Ross' citation of Herzl as a Wagnerian) who were unlikely to have any truck with an extreme anti-Semite.

But if the analogy doesn't help, I simply meant that while Wagnerism (the music, the syncretic concept of the arts that underpinned it, etc., etc.) was tremendously influential on Western culture in the late 19th Century, the breadth of that influence didn't mean that most Wagnerians of all the various stripes of Wagnerians there were at the time were well-informed about Wagner's dark view of the Jews -- views that again were to be profoundly influential on those who were inclined to be influenced by them. Thus that latter-day virtuous and/or anomalous person X was a devout Wagnerian doesn't normalize Wagner's anti-Semitism; and to suggest that it does, a la Ross, seems disingenuous to me.

[Chuck Nessa]

You might be driving me back. Think some more.

OTOH, you seem to have overthought it already.

Edited September 27, 2012 by Chuck Nessa

[Blue Train]

Out of curiosity. How many are fans of Karajan? He joined the Nazi party and did the Nazi salute. Furtwängler never joined. He also never did the salute but was put on trial.

Even the video with him shaking Goebbels hand at the birthday concert has him wiping his hand clean with a handkerchief right after it.

Carl Orff music is played in Israel. Orff's Carmina Burana was composed in honor of the Nazi leaders. Orff agreed after Richard Strauss (someone else who isn't played often if ever in Israel and who also was a bigot.) refused to remove Mendelssohn's name from a composition. Orff had no problem with that. Chopin was an extreme bigot, but his music is still played in Israel as well and has been played by many Jewish musicians.

Wagner did have an appreciation of Jewish composers such as Mendelssohn (his "Hebrides Overture") and Halévy (his opera "The Jewess").

He also had friendships with those who were Jewish such as Heinrich Porges and Hermann Levi. The later was a Rabbi's son. Wagner even had an affair with a half-Jewish French writer. As in, Judith Gautier. She was the daughter of author Theophile Gautier and the singer Giulia Grisi.

He would also refuse to sign any public declarations against those who were Jewish if I am not mistaken. Wagner also worked with many who were Jewish. Wagner's PR guy was Jewish. Hermann Levi conducted Wagner's works at the time, including Wagner's most Christian of all his operas, Parsifal. Rubenstein finished the orchestration of some of his operas.

On the other hand while he would conduct Mendelssohn's music....he wore gloves to not soil his hands from playing Jewish music. As in, he was a train wreck

Edited September 27, 2012 by Blue Train

[Christiern]

When I managed a radio station here in NYC, we played the entire Wagner Ring every year (it takes many hours) using the previous year's live recordings from the Bayreuth Festival rather than commercially issued recordings. There were complaints from some Jewish listeners, but I thought it was rather ludicrous to buy and drive a Volkswagen and go bananas over Wagner. The Volkswagen really had a tie to Hitler, it was his idea. With that in mind, I politely informed complainants that I thought they were being too sensitive. There probably isn't a day when we don't enjoy something that was created by a bigoted person. The Catholic Church killed and tortured a lot of people during the inquisition—should we not listen to or read works created by Catholics? It doesn't make much sense to me—double standards never did,

[Big Wheel]

Lots of Jews didn't buy Volkswagens, or Mercedes for that matter. My grandfather has pointedly never bought a German car in his life.

That said, I think Larry is reaching a bit with the bit about normalization. More later.

[Big Wheel]

But if the analogy doesn't help, I simply meant that while Wagnerism (the music, the syncretic concept of the arts that underpinned it, etc., etc.) was tremendously influential on Western culture in the late 19th Century, the breadth of that influence didn't mean that most Wagnerians of all the various stripes of Wagnerians there were at the time were well-informed about Wagner's dark view of the Jews -- views that again were to be profoundly influential on those who were inclined to be influenced by them. Thus that latter-day virtuous and/or anomalous person X was a devout Wagnerian doesn't normalize Wagner's anti-Semitism; and to suggest that it does, a la Ross, seems disingenuous to me.

I don't read Ross as "normalizing" anything, especially not Wagner's views on Jews. He's pointing out the irony that even the grandfather of the Jewish state drew great inspiration from Wagner's work, yet it's still off-limits in Israel. Your last two sentences appear to be suggesting that Herzl, who was 23 when Wagner died, couldn't have possibly been aware that Wagner was, personally, a raging anti-semite. That appears to be very much false:

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/19/opinion/editorial-notebook-wagner-israel-and-herzl.html?pagewanted=2&src=pm

Herzl was fully aware of Wagner's bigotry. Indeed his first brush with anti-Semitism occurred during student demonstrations prompted by the composer's death.

[robertoart]

My link

Here's an interesting series of exchanges on this topic by 'Barry and Mark', exploring the relationship between Wagner's antisemitism and it's textual presence in in his music. I find the arguments by the writer Barry - that because Wagner's antisemitisim and scapegoating of the Jews was intrinsic to his subjectivity, it was also intrinsic in his music - an interesting one. And I think this is one of the pivotal points to think about in these kinds of discourses.

Also, I have never researched or known about the actual ways Wagner publicly organised his antisemitism into ideology, as others here so obviously already know, so

regarding the 'normative question', I think it swings on the space between the intrinsic antisemitism of history, and it's incorporation into cultural ideology. As the normative position of non-Jews was anti-Jew, so I would say the manifestation of this into systematic antisemitism - by those with the cultural and ideological agency to do so -(ie, Wagner), was also a normative position. The history of Christianity -from every perspective - also follows a similar path, it just didn't play itself out in the holocaust (in name at least), although as a belief system and ideology of it's own, it was as normatively reprehensible and responsible as the 'teutonic purity' push was.

At the end of the day, the 'listen to Wagner - don't listen to Wagner' choice is a purely subjective one, that will eventually be normalised culturally - one way or the other - by weight of numbers, which appears to be happening in Israel now, if the overwhelming majority stayed and didn't leave.

Edited September 27, 2012 by freelancer

[AllenLowe]

Stefan - if Wagner was one of the founders of Scientific Anti-Semitism, IN Germany, than yes, he was both indirectly AND directly responsible for the holocaust.

on the other hand, I couldn't live without my Lederhosen.

I continue to be with Larry on this. re-read his posts; they are more nuanced than we are allowing for here. And he's absolutely right on all counts.

Edited September 27, 2012 by AllenLowe

[Stefan Wood]

Allen, I have full respect for you, but that comment has to be the nuttiest thing I have ever read, on any forum.

Edited September 27, 2012 by Stefan Wood

[AllenLowe]

it's nutty to say that the guy who helped develop an intellectual rationale for anti-semitism, in the country of the Holocaust, bears great responsibility for that Holocaust?

certainly I've said crazier things than that. Give me a few minutes.

look, here's from an article in something called The Telegraph:

"1:32PM BST 25 Jul 2011

• Hitler wrote in his first volume of his book Mein Kampf: "At the age of twelve, I saw ... the first opera of my life, Lohengrin. In one instant I was addicted. My youthful enthusiasm for the Bayreuth Master knew no bounds." • Aged 16, Hitler quit school and spent the next three years being idle. He is said to have spent a tidy proportion of his pocket money on going to the opera. He became passionate about Wagner.

• Wagner's anti-Semitic and fervently nationalistic writings are thought to have had a quasi-religious effect on Hitler. His theories of racial purity were partly drawn from Wagner. According to Wagner: "The Volk has always been the essence of all the individuals who constituted a commonality. In the beginning, it was the family and the races; then the races united through linguistic equality as a nation."

• On January 13, 1933 the newly-elected National Socialist Party celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of Richard Wagner's death by staging a grandiose memorial ceremony in Leipzig, the composer's birthplace. Adolf Hitler invited Siegfried Wagner's widow, the English-born Winifred, and her son Wieland to be guests of honor at this event.

• Each summer, from 1933 to 1939, Hitler attended the Bayreuth Festival, and he made the Wagner estate, Wahnfried, his second home.

• Hitler reinterpreted the story of Wagner's final opera Parsifal to fit his own ideological vision. The story carries elements of Buddhist renunciation suggested by Wagner's readings of Schopenhauer. However, Hitler wrote of it: "What is celebrated is not the Christian Schopenhauerian [sic] religion of compassion, but pure and noble blood, blood whose purity the brotherhood of initiates has come together to guard.

• "Wagner's line of thought is intimately familiar to me", Hitler once said. "At every stage of my life I come back to him."

• The Wagner family and their supporters had campaigned in the early 20th Century for a special copyright law that would restrict performances of Wagner's opera 'Parsifal' to Bayreuth. In 1923 Hitler visited Wagner's grave and reportedly promised: "If I should ever succeed in exerting any influence on Germany's destiny, I will see that Parsifal is given back to Bayreuth". He did not fulfill this.

• A recent documentary, The Wagner Family, alleged that the Wagner family knowingly aligned itself with Hitler’s movement from the beginning.

Edited September 27, 2012 by AllenLowe