by A. N. Wilson
No friend, perhaps, fascinated them more in those early days of their shared domestic life than a professor of philology from Basel named Friedrich Nietzsche. They first met in 1869, the year of Fidi’s birth. It was because of my proposed thesis subject – Richard Wagner and nineteenth-century philosophy, with special reference to his reading of Schopenhauer’s Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung – that Fidi, with great boldness, simply went to his mother’s quarters and removed the sacred volumes of the diaries for me to read, explaining, as he flicked ash over their pages, that there would be bound to be ‘stuff in there to interest you, my dear.’
‘Have you read them?’
‘I couldn’t possibly, couldn’t possibly. Would you want to read your mother’s diaries? All her sorrows about one’s father’s mistresses, all her sexual guilt, my dear, I couldn’t bear it.’ Oh, how different our mothers! The idea of my mother having any sexual feelings at all, or my father having mistresses, was so absolutely alien that I could not hear Fidi’s words without a smile. Naturally, when Eva discovered that he had been showing the precious diaries to ‘your young fancy man’, as she flatteringly but wrongly described me to her brother, there was a tremendous hullabaloo.
My friendship at Freyburg with Martin H——— had actually persuaded me that Nietzsche was a much more interesting philosopher than his hero Schopenhauer; that he had (really from his first utterances in The Birth of Tragedy about the Dionysian impulse in humanity, from which the great dramas of Aeschylus and the great music dramas of Wagner came) anticipated, as no other writer had, our twentieth-century follies and horrors. By chance, Nietzsche was staying in the house at Tribschen on the very night that Fidi was born. One writes ‘by chance’, but since he made so many visits to the Wagners that year it was hardly very surprising that he should have been in the house that June when Cosima went into labour.
Cosima was thirty-two years old, her lover fifty-six, when their son Siegfried was born. Nietzsche was a mere twenty-four. Wagner felt too old to be the father of a baby boy and, in the letters that survived that stormy friendship, we read him exclaiming to Nietzsche that he felt more like a grandfather to the baby. ‘We need someone to form a link between him and me, a link like that between son and grandson such as only you can provide.’ A few years later, when trying to persuade Nietzsche to come and live with them and be Fidi’s personal tutor, Wagner would exclaim, ‘He needs you! The boy needs you!’ By then the friendship was on the rocks. Nietzsche, who had written The Birth of Tragedy as an act of homage to the greatest genius of the age, had become completely disillusioned by Wagner and his cult, distrusting its bogus religiosity. Once the shrine at Bayreuth had been established, the scales began to fall from the young Nietzsche’s eyes – ‘Bayreuth – bereits bereut’ as he famously quipped.*
Adultery is a lonely business and however many of Wagner’s musical admirers clustered around them in those early days in Switzerland, they somewhat lacked for intimates. Both of them formed that passion for a third party which is a periodic feature of married life, but which is especially a feature of the newly formed adulterous pair, who feel estranged from many of their former associates. Thus, while having many conversations with Nietzsche about Schopenhauer, Beethoven, Goethe and the Greeks, and while playing music with him to their mutual delight, both the Wagners delighted in adopting the young man as their own and setting him all manner of tasks, as if to bond with him the better.
They liked sending him on shopping errands, particularly for chocolates, sweetmeats and delicacies unobtainable in Lucerne. Sometimes the items on their shopping list were considerably more elaborate. Wagner had for long coveted a lamp designed by his old revolutionary comrade Gottfried Semper. It was still in Dresden, where Semper and Wagner had manned the barricades in 1848, and where some said that Wagner had set light to the opera house of which he was the young orchestral director. There was a difficulty about the lamp, apart from the obvious one that Wagner had no money to pay for it. It had been bought for the synagogue and consecrated for use. Since writing his controversial pamphlet ‘Das Judentum in der Musik’ – the most catastrophic mistake of his professional life – Wagner had made many enemies. Many Jews, in deference to his musical genius, were prepared to overlook the fact that, in common with so many figures of the nineteenth century, Wagner was infected with the poison of anti-Semitism.
Some of the greatest Wagnerian performers and conductors were Jews, but those of them who came close to him, most notably Hermann Levi, were compelled to tread the tightrope between the moods in which the Master repented of his pamphlet and of his anti-Jewish views, and times, especially alcohol-induced, when he fell back into the vulgar clichés of Jew hatred. Nietzsche too was both people – someone who saw and deplored the essential vulgarity and folly of hating or blaming a whole category of people for the ills of this world, and who harbored the gut instincts of anti-Judaism. Indeed, the whole of his Birth of Tragedy was posited on the idea that truly creative art is Dionysian – Greek – and that its enemy is the Apollonian. Apollo he associates with Socrates, the cutter-down of romance to size, the logic chopper, the empirical materialist – the Jew. Socrates in Nietzsche is a code word for the Jew and The Birth of Tragedy is, while being an infinitely more interesting book than Wagner’s earlier pamphlet, a sort of rerun of ideas that were to be found in Das Judentum in der Musik.
Worried by her husband’s health, his breathlessness, his weak heart, his over-indulgence in alcohol and tobacco, she begged their young friend Nietzsche, ‘a request as from a mother to a son. Do not stir up this hornet’s nest. Do you understand what I mean? Do not refer to the Jews by name especially en passant.’ As ragingly anti-Semitic as the rest of them, she nevertheless feared that once they got onto the subject Wagner might have a seizure.
Hence it was that Nietzsche was dispatched to Dresden to buy the lamp. Nietzsche made enquiries at the jewellers Meyer and Noske and with the ‘Elders of Israel’ at the synagogue and did, amazingly, return to Tribschen with a replica of the synagogue lamp. He told the jewellers that he was purchasing it on behalf of ‘a lady of rank’. Had he told them he was buying it (with bouncing cheques) for one who considered them to be ‘teeming maggots on the rotting corpse of German art’, it is possible that they would have parted from it less willingly. Whether the ‘lady of rank’ was Cosima or Richard, Nietzsche did not vouchsafe. As is well known, after he grew disillusioned with Wagner, he posited the view that Wagner was in all essentials a woman. He hints naughtily at Wagner’s taste not merely for silky soft furnishings, but also for cross-dressing in women’s underwear. And he concluded that ‘Wagner was unmistakably femini generis – the bisexual god in the labyrinth – the labyrinth of the modern soul.’
In the first year they knew him, however, Nietzsche loved both the Wagners unreservedly and happily did their errands. He went to Basel to have Wagner’s books re-bound, the Roman authors in yellow ochre, the Greeks in sienna, with marbled paper and calf spines, the very same volumes that I myself handled daily in the library at Wahnfried. Closer to me still – for did I not begin this meditation with a puppet sitting forlornly with me in my foul little flat? – was Cosima’s commission to get the young professor to buy the children wooden puppets and the whole paraphernalia of a puppet theatre. He purchased it in readiness for Fidi’s first Christmas in the world, 1869, which they all spent together in the Villa Tribschen. Cosima’s diary describes the idyllic Christmas scene, including the arrival of Knecht Ruprecht to the appropriate screams and shouts from the children. During my childhood we always had this ceremony – with Saint Nicholas distributing presents to children who had been good and his villainous sidekick offering pieces of coal to children who had been bad, on the Feast of Saint Nicholas (6 December) but the Wagners, who followed their own star, used to do it, even in my days with them, on Christmas Eve.
It was strange to think of that puppet theatre, which I myself knew so well in the 1920s, and early 1930s, having been purchased half a
century before by my favourite philosopher, and the same lady who had commissioned their purchase still being alive.
It must have been after the death of Mr Chamberlain – in fact, I am sure it was a good while after his death. (My chronology does get muddled. Though I would vouch for every fact in this narrative, I would not go to the firing squad to insist I have everything in the right order.) But I should say that the next incident I recollect was about two years after Chamberlain’s death. I date these things from remembering the children, and Friedelind, when she accosted me that afternoon, had grown enormously in all directions from the plump girl who had told me about the performance of ‘The Fisherman and His Wife’.
She must have been about eleven, but a substantial maiden, with none of her sister Verena’s delicacy. She looked like a version of what Winnie might have been if her face had been fat. ‘Don’t eat so much, for heaven’s sake, Winnie, stop stuffing yourself, my God you’re greedy!’ These were the constant mealtime expletives of Fidi in those latter days. Although my beloved Winnie grew to be a substantial goddess, it would have been wrong to describe her as fat. She burnt off her energy with hyperactivity and cigarette smoking. Friedelind was definitely obese. But she was also tall and, for her age, disturbingly womanly. There were the beginnings of breasts on her already wobbly chest. But more than that, her moist hands, her pouting lips, her particular and inviting way of standing with one foot in front of the other suggested even at this early age the keen sensual interests that would be so marked a feature of her adult life.
Strangely, when she told me about that particular day’s puppet show, it was of her that I instinctively thought ‘Aren’t you a bit old for that sort of thing?’ rather than applying the judgement to her two elder brothers, Wieland and Wolfgang, who were by then beginning to be teenagers. ‘It’s “The Jew in the Thornbush”,’ she said. ‘Uncle Wolf is doing “The Jew in the Thornbush”.’
‘How exciting.’
‘I thought perhaps “The Maiden Without Hands”,’ she said. ‘We could have adapted one of the puppets for that.’
I laughed, because I was so evidently supposed to do so; also because Friedelind was always a sympathetic person and when she laughed the world laughed with her.
‘“The Seven Ravens”,’ she said, ‘but in the end, we’ve opted for “The Jew”.’
‘Great!’
‘Wieland’s got the old puppet – you know, the Punchinello from Grandmama’s puppet theatre?’
‘I think I remember it.’
‘He’s added a new nose – made it even bigger! It’s a real honker now. Uncle Wolf says we’re to give him a right beating.’
She announced the programme as if nothing could be greater fun and I cannot now, at a distance of over thirty-five years, recall what I felt. I mean, obviously I should like to record that I felt some revulsion; or that I had remonstrated with Friedelind as she took my hand and led me into the salon. Her hand, as always, was plump and moist. I felt the pressure of the fleshy fingers against my own and was disturbed by the powerful erotic effect this girl had upon me. You see, that is something I can remember. But I cannot remember how I reacted to her excitement about ‘The Jew in the Thornbush’.
You remember the story, I am sure. A young apprentice works hard for his master for three years without being paid and at the end of that period all his master gives him is a measly three farthings. But he is a happy, easygoing German and he goes on his way cheerfully singing until he comes to the middle of a wood. There he meets a little man who persuades him that, since he is an able-bodied youth, he can easily earn another three farthings, whereas the manikin is weak: ‘If you give me the three farthings I will grant you a wish for each of them.’ So the youth hands over his money and he makes three wishes: the first is that he wants a fowling piece which will hit any target he aims for; the second is that if he plays his fiddle, anyone who hears it will dance to his tune; and the third is that if he makes any further requests, no one will be able to refuse them.
By and by he comes upon an old Jew. In the original medieval versions of the story the youth meets a swindling friar, but by the time the Brothers Grimm had heard oral versions of the tale, in Hesse and Paderborn, the villain of the story had been changed from a dishonest churchman into a Jew. Wilhelm Grimm, in his revisions of the story, makes the Jew into an even greater caricature than in the originals, adding his long goatee beard, and making him speak with the exaggerated lisps and distortions of the stereotypical Jew. What follows is sheer brutality. The Jew is standing, innocently enough, listening to a bird singing in the woods above a patch of thornbushes. He wants the bird alive, as a pet, because he likes its singing voice, but the youth shoots the bird down, then makes the Jew dance in the thorns until his clothes are ragged and he is covered in cuts. The youth steals the Jew’s purse full of gold.
In an effort to establish his rights, the Jew takes the youth into the nearest town and drags him before the judge. ‘Sir judge, this young man has waylaid me on the public highway and robbed me and ruined my clothes.’ The judge condemns the youth to be hanged, but as he climbs the gallows he asks for one last request – to be allowed to play his fiddle. Because the youth is charmed and no one can refuse his requests, the judge lets him play the fiddle in the public square. Everyone dances to his tune: the judge, the townsfolk and the Jew. Fat, thin, old and young, they all dance madly at the young man’s enchantment. At last the judge promises to grant him his life if he will only stop the dance.
Then the youth is led down from the gallows and he goes up to the Jew who is lying exhausted on the ground. ‘You thief,’ he says. ‘That gold was not yours. You are the one who deserves to be hanged.’ The Jew confesses that he was indeed a thief. The rope is put round his neck, rather than the youth’s, and he is hanged.
By the time I entered the salon to watch the dress rehearsals, Uncle Wolf had the children all ready with their parts. Wolfgang, a finely chiselled ten-year-old, was speaking the part of the wicked employer at the beginning of the story. Wieland, two years older and with a far greater histrionic gift, was playing the Jew. Verena who was eight played the bird and the judge. Friedelind played the part of the charmed youth.
Uncle Wolf had on this occasion been staying in the house only a couple of days, but he had rehearsed them well, not only in the speaking of their lines, but also in their adaptation of the puppets. For example, they had used the policeman from the Punch and Judy puppet show, but placed an ingenious top hat on his head to cover his helmet so that he resembled a capitalist exploiter of the masses. The Jew, originally Mr Punch, had, as Friedelind had reported to me, been given an even bigger nose than the Punchinello puppet, and a long straggling grey beard made of wool. The youth, slightly smaller in proportion than the other puppets, had not come with the original set of Punch and Judy figures and looked, from his tunic, his green stockings and his hunting hat, as if he could have played Tannhäuser, or indeed any conventional rustic German hero out on the hunting field. The children played the dramatized version of the story with tremendous brio, and much spluttering mirth. When Friedelind/The Youth played the fiddle, Wolfgang, his part as the employer finished, took up his own violin and produced frenzied jigs for the puppets to dance to.
The rise and rise of H and his political friends had undergone a considerable check in the previous few years. There were certain signs that the ever-volatile economy was recovering. The disastrous levels of inflation were falling. Then, in 1929, the charmed Youth started to get his wishes coming true and everyone began to dance to his fiddle. The Nazis formed a bold alliance with the Conservatives in opposing the Young Plan – an American scheme to rationalize the repayment by Germany of reparations to the Allies. If it had succeeded, the liberal schemes of Chancellor Stresemann might have succeeded. On one level the plebiscite was a triumph for the liberals – Hugenberg and H combined needed twenty-one million votes to defeat the Young Plan, and they got a mere six million. ‘What is Alfred Hugenberg play
ing at?’ I remember my father asking despondently. It was as if he had heard a valued old colleague had been very mildly misbehaving – flirting with a secretary, for example.
The alliance with Hugenberg’s bourgeois followers did H little good with the revolutionary rank and file of his own party, the storm-troopers and maniacs. But it brought him a lot of kudos with the sort of voters who had feared he was not respectable, was not on their side. The farmer, the miller, the small shopkeeper and the provincial pharmacist saw H lining up with solid Conservative politicians on a ticket of Stopping the Foreigners Interfering in Our Economy. As soon as the plebiscite was over, H disguised the humiliation of its failure by blaming everything on Hugenberg and breaking the alliance at once. But he had collected many potential supporters in the process, from the ranks of those who were no storm-troopers, but simply respectable people. He had also befriended big business, many of whose magnates were now prepared, if there was a downturn in the economy, to support the more radical proposals which the Nazis had to offer.