Personal enmity apart, the Wagners long stayed at odds over the knotty practical questions arising from Winifred’s original proposal. Was a foundation really the best solution? If so, did outsiders have to be involved in it? If they did, how best could the family retain influence? Crucially, how much cash could be raised, from whom, through the sale of which assets? The negotiations dragged on for a good five years before answers just about acceptable to everyone could be hammered out, and in the dramatic final phase Winifred landed in hospital for a while with heart trouble.
Thus it was not until 2 May 1973 that the charter of the ‘Richard Wagner Foundation Bayreuth’ could at long last be signed and sealed, creating a public institution into which the century-old family empire was subsumed. Naturally it was a painful occasion as well as an historic one, but the Wagners could console themselves above all with the thought that the sale of the archive lock, stock and barrel was netting them a tidy DM12.4m. More could easily have been raised had the items been sold piecemeal but, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, all members of the family came to agree that the collection should be preserved intact. It was therefore sold jointly to the federal government and two public bodies in Bavaria, who agreed to make it available to the Foundation on permanent loan. In the first place the whole sum thus raised was due to Winifred, who had inherited the estate and had the right to dispose of it – subject to legal restrictions written into her will with Siegfried. But she had long since pledged that any funds would be shared out forthwith among her heirs; one quarter of the balance to each of her three surviving offspring (Wolfgang, Friedelind and Verena), and the final quarter to be divided among Wieland’s children (Wummi, Iris, Nike and Daphne). In one fell swoop, therefore, most of the family’s financial worries were swept away – incidentally, a hefty bill for death duties was also averted.
To any outsider prepared to wade through it, the Foundation’s charter no doubt seemed an unrewarding document – either unnecessarily complicated or boringly obvious.7 It stated, for instance, that the new body aimed to preserve Wagner’s ‘artistic heritage for the general public in perpetuity’, to promote understanding for his work, especially among the young, and to encourage research. Who, Wagner-phobes apart, could possibly be against any of that? But the document also stressed that the Festspielhaus would be made available ‘for the purpose for which it was intended by its builder, that is solely for the festive performance of Richard Wagner’s works’. That may, perhaps, have been the Master’s ultimate purpose but he did not specifically say so. As already noted, at one time he was keen to see the ‘Wagner festival’ he dreamed of used to propagate new works by other German composers. It was Siegfried who formally imposed the ‘only Wagner’ restriction on the basis of a tradition founded by his mother. By enshrining it in the charter with all the force of the Master’s (alleged) word, it has been easy ever since to throttle discussion about widening Bayreuth’s repertoire.
The Festspielhaus was, in fact, the only part of the Wagner empire to be transferred direct to the new Foundation. Since the sale of the venerable pile was forbidden under the terms of the Siegfried/Winifred will, the family simply had to hand it over free of charge, along with its land and ancillary buildings. The case of Wahnfried was trickier. With the Master and Cosima buried in the back garden, it seemed disagreeable if not unethical to sell the place – and besides any purchaser would have to spend a lot on restoration. Finally the town of Bayreuth came to the rescue as financier and go-between. It bought the Siegfried-Wagner-Haus for DM600,000 but was given Wahnfried itself for nothing – on condition that both buildings (like the archive) be placed on permanent loan with the Foundation, and that Winifred be allowed to stay in the annexe to the end of her days. In the event, the town had to fork out for Wahnfried too. Rebuilding the place and turning it into a museum cost DM3.2m, half of which came from the federal government and the state of Bavaria together – but Bayreuth put in DM450,000.
Thanks to these complex arrangements, a lot of people had their fingers in the pie; more precisely, the financial weight of the various backers was reflected in the make-up of the Foundation’s twenty-four-member council of trustees. Five votes each went to the federal German government and the state of Bavaria; two each to the town of Bayreuth and three other Bavarian outfits; one to the Society of Friends of Bayreuth (which had renounced its claims on sums it put up to modernise the Festspielhaus when the family owned it). The remaining five votes went to the various branches of the Wagner family – with the proviso that the number would be cut to four (and the Friends’ share raised to two) when Winifred died. Those latter, relatively puny, figures were, of course, a far cry from the permanent majority for the family that Winifred had originally expected. Didn’t they mean that the Wagners would be shunted onto the sidelines for good?
They did not. Wolfgang was – naturally – confirmed in office as director, the Festspielhaus was leased to him by the Foundation and his artistic independence was guaranteed. He thus remained responsible for running the festival and continued to bear the risks that went with the job; but he had powerful, committed backers and (along with the rest of the family) he was relieved of the worries of ownership. It was the kind of result the Master had dreamed of but had never been able to achieve. Moreover, the Foundation’s charter specified that when it came to deciding on a future director the job would ‘as a rule’ be given to ‘one or several members’ of the Wagner family. This would only not be the case if ‘other, more suitable’ outside candidates applied. Should the council have doubts about how suitable a Wagner really was for the job, it would seek an expert report from the directors of leading German opera houses. In other words, the family was not wholly assured of victory in any future race for rule on the Green Hill – but it was given a head start. Bolstered by that comforting thought, and millions of Deutschmarks richer, the Wagners seemed well set for a calm and confident run-up to the festival’s 1976 centenary. As usual, though, things did not stay peaceful for long.
18
Time Present and Time Past
‘If Hitler were to walk in through the door here today, for instance,’ Winifred exclaimed in 1975, starting to stammer with joy at the very thought, ‘I would be just as … as … as glad and as … as … happy as ever to see him and have him here.’1 Seated in the Siegfried-Wagner-Haus that was now her home, the former Mistress of Bayreuth fondly recalled how the Führer (‘he called me Winnie, I called him Wolf’) had spent one festival summer after another in the selfsame building adjoining Wahnfried. The grateful guest had even told her longingly in 1936 how ‘splendid’ it would be if he could settle down there for good one day (presumably, bizarre though the notion seems, when he ‘retired’). It is not clear how seriously Winifred took that statement at the time, but nearly four decades later she clearly relished the memory of it.
It was true, the old woman conceded in her marathon interview with Hans Jürgen Syberberg, one of the most controversial of German ‘new wave’ film directors, that Hitler had had a ‘dark side’ – but that did not count for her because she had never personally witnessed it. Besides, the ‘negative’ aspects of the ‘Third Reich’ had been ‘basically’ the work of other people like Julius Streicher (Gauleiter of Franconia and founder of the violently antisemitic weekly Der Stürmer) who had been ‘simply impossible’ and whom ‘we all despised’. The ‘Wolf’ she knew had been full of Austrian tact and warmth – not to mention love of (Richard) Wagner – and he had, so she claimed, never disappointed her in all the twenty-two years (i.e. between 1923 and 1945) of their relationship. As a ‘madly loyal’ person, she was able wholly to separate her personal feelings for such a constant friend from everything that had gone on in the outside world. Admitting that this attitude might seem hard to understand, Winifred added with her habitual deep laugh dissolving into a bronchial cough (she was, to the end, a heavy smoker), that it would probably take a ‘depth psychologist’ to clarify her relationship with Hitler.
On
any shortlist of unlikely screen classics, the film from which the above remarks are drawn would have to be placed high. Shot almost wholly in the Siegfried-Wagner-Haus over five days in April 1975, the black-and-white documentary lasts a good five hours – at least as long as Parsifal – and features a cast of just one. But since that one is Winifred, at seventy-seven still clear in mind if not in judgement and ever more garrulous in the face of Syberberg’s seemingly innocent enquiries, the result makes for revealing and often riveting viewing. Of all the records available about the history of the clan in the twentieth century, this one – for all its distortion and occasional repetition – is probably the least dispensable. Trenchant, often humorous, seemingly devoid of self-pity (indeed, of any pity), the solitary star of the Syberberg epic brings her six decades in Bayreuth vividly to life – from her first meeting with Siegfried in 1914 and her early years of marriage under Cosima’s eagle eye, right through to the bombing of Wahnfried and the festival’s post-war rebirth. When the talk turns to Hitler, though, as it several times does, her words become fonder, her eyes brighter, her gestures more animated. It does not take a ‘depth psychologist’ to deduce that this is a woman in love – one whose infatuation might very well, decades before, have made her blind to the monstrous deeds of her idol in the ‘outside world’.
Winifred later complained that Syberberg had tricked her into indiscretion, first by leaving her in the dark about how much he aimed to focus on the Nazi era, then by using comments she had not meant to reach the public. Perhaps so, although it is not wholly clear who may have been tricking whom. Winifred made her notorious ‘if Hitler were to walk in’ remark during a change of film reel but, apparently unbeknown to her, with the tape recorder still running. Her words were then inserted into the final film footage against a scene in which she, with her back to the camera, sits eating alone at the head of a long table – playing hostess, as it were, to old ghosts in a macabre version of that evergreen sketch ‘Dinner for One’. That approach hardly seems to be playing fair (though Syberberg maintains that the film with this scene included was later seen and accepted by Wolfgang before its release).2 On the other hand, Winifred does give every sign on screen of entering into the project with zest, plainly glad of the chance to get her version of her life and times – ‘Wolf’ included – off her chest at last. That impression is bolstered by Wolfgang’s son Gottfried, who first made the contact between Winifred and Syberberg and who was present throughout the filming. In his view, the artful old lady knew very well what she was doing and took command of the proceedings right away. Before shooting began she had even phoned her friend Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler’s favourite film-maker (of Triumph des Willens infamy), for tips on how best to present herself ‘on set’.
Whether Winifred was used by Syberberg, or he by her, or each by the other, what she said on screen and off is plainly what she really thought. Much of it can have come as no surprise to her USA circle, nor to appalled Bayreuth artists like Fischer-Dieskau and the tenor James King, to whom the ex-director had happened to chat about her friend Hitler and the ‘good old days’. But in this case she was courting, or at least risking, worldwide publicity and was doing so just one year before the festival was due to celebrate its centenary. In fact, not all reaction to her screen solo was downright hostile. At the world premiere in Paris in July, given as part of a festival of Syberberg’s work, many of those present walked out before the end – evidently in boredom or incomprehension. When the film was shown in Germany towards the end of the year, Winifred received friendly letters not just from Nazi sympathisers but from people who simply felt she had been forthright on a topic her generation usually ducked. In general, though, the press reaction was ferocious, sparked above all by an ironic article headed ‘Der gute Onkel von Bayreuth’ (The Good Uncle of Bayreuth) that appeared in the liberal Hamburg weekly Die Zeit soon after the Paris showing.3
At the start of the 1975 festival season and with centenary preparations well under way, Wolfgang suddenly found himself on the spot. Although he had known about the project from the first and had seen Syberberg’s material in the wake of filming, he had evidently not expected the finished product to raise such a storm. Now he faced a public-relations debacle and the danger that, unless the damage could be quickly limited, demands to chop public funding for ‘neo-Nazi Bayreuth’ might become unstoppable. Accordingly, he stressed at a press conference that Winifred had long since had nothing whatever to do with the festival and that he was banning her from the Festspielhaus (or rather, as he more delicately put it, that he had asked her not to appear on the Green Hill until further notice).4 Thus the weapon that he had already wielded against his elder sister and later turned on his son was used against his mother – for what transpired to be a full two years. Winifred was not even allowed to take part in the ceremony held in front of Wahnfried in July 1976, to mark the opening of the former family home as a museum – that scheme for which she herself had cleared the way with her drive for a Foundation. Sharp-eyed bystanders, though, caught an occasional glimpse of the fabled persona non grata peering out at the throng from a window of the Siegfried-Wagner-Haus, and cocking an ear as the festival choir launched the proceedings with (almost inevitably) the rousing ‘Wach’ auf!’ chorus from Die Meistersinger.
Oddly enough, when the Syberberg film was first released few people seemed struck that Winifred’s comments tended to compromise her sons, the builders of ‘New Bayreuth’, as well as herself. Admittedly Wolfgang, as the ‘little’ brother, came off pretty lightly – although he can hardly have thanked his mother for telling viewers how, after being wounded in Poland, he had been brought flowers in hospital by a sympathetic ‘Uncle Wolf’. But it was Wieland, the old woman stressed, on whom Hitler had specially bestowed so much of his own love of Wagner’s music, who had been given every possible privilege and freed from war duty. Even if her eldest son had later felt unable to speak out in favour of his benefactor, Winifred added with ire, feelings of gratitude should at least have induced him to stay silent. Instead, she claimed, he had declared ‘as far I am concerned, Adolf Hitler is finished’ and with that ‘the matter for him was over and done with’.
Banned! Winifred with Hitler as lapdog banned by Wolfgang from the ‘Green Hill’.
(E. M. Lang. Süddeutsche Zeitung)
It is no surprise that, at the time, Wieland’s offspring spurned this account of their father’s early history, instead of pondering how much of it might be true and what more there might still be to learn. The children were naturally aware that in the grim and distant past Hitler had regrettably doted on the whole family – but whose fault had that been? They had long since dismissed their granny’s rhapsodies about the Reich and were now simply angry that Wieland’s hard, post-war work to free ‘the real Wagner’ from the shadow of Nazism was being, as they felt, gratuitously besmirched. Still, family reaction apart, it seems strange that Winifred’s revelations did not prompt wider critical scrutiny of the role her offspring had played up to 1945. All the more so since the political climate in the Federal Republic was now far from conservative and other historical material, besides Syberberg’s film, was starting to emerge of which the Wagners could hardly be proud.
When Bayreuth celebrated its centenary in 1976, the Social Democratic–Free Democratic government that replaced the ‘grand coalition’ in Bonn had been in power for almost seven years. In that time much had changed. Abroad, the left–liberal alliance had forged an Ostpolitik of reconciliation with the Federal Republic’s eastern neighbours – a policy dramatically underscored in 1970 when Chancellor Brandt fell on his knees in Warsaw before the memorial to victims of the wartime ghetto uprising against the Nazis. At home, the partners had – as Brandt put it – ‘dared more democracy’, launching social and economic reforms that were in part ill-considered and too costly but that in the main swept the country with an exhilarating, much needed, wind of change. By mid-1974 Brandt had gone, brought down as government leader ostensibly over a sp
y scandal; but under his skilled and eloquent, albeit abrasive, successor Helmut Schmidt the coalition itself held together – and was to do so right through into the 1980s. Meanwhile Walter Scheel, formerly Brandt’s closest ally as foreign minister and leader of the Free Democrats, had become federal president – and it was in this role that he turned up in Bayreuth as guest of honour for the main centenary ceremony.
Beneath the natural bonhomie that had made him a popular but sometimes underestimated leader, Scheel had a tough streak and if he felt the occasion demanded he could startle with his readiness to mince no words. So it was when he gave the keynote address to the serried ranks of Wagnerian and other dignitaries in the Festspielhaus on 23 July 1976.5 At the very start, the president had the throng chuckling nervously with his ironic admission that he felt no urgent need to make a ‘declaration of faith’ in Bayreuth, let alone to journey there ‘as a pilgrim’. The smiles, though, were soon to fade. Richard Wagner, Scheel noted, had viewed himself as the very embodiment of genius and had been so viewed by his acolytes in a late-romantic era shot through with pathos and Weltschmerz (world-weariness). Thus an ‘irrational claim’ had coincided with an ‘irrational readiness’ to accept it. But ‘when seen by the light of day’ did the music dramas really offer more elevated insights or a more profound experience than, say, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Goethe’s Faust, Dante’s Divina Commedia or Shakespeare’s tragedies? Unquestionably, the president declared, Wagner had been ‘one of the most important German composers’, but that did not make Bayreuth ‘the spiritual centre of the world’.
Bad enough, for many devotees present, that the Master should be classed simply as one fine composer among others – but there was worse to come. Scheel conceded that Bayreuth had enjoyed artistic triumph in the course of the past hundred years but – as a festival beloved and protected by Hitler – it had also been guilty of involvement in great wrong. Blame for that was due not only to ‘those responsible for Bayreuth’ who had thought they were fostering culture without noticing they were being instrumentalised for an evil policy, but also to all those democrats who had earlier abandoned the festival to the forces of reaction. Scheel stressed that he did not believe that Wagner’s undoubted antisemitism had been responsible for Hitler’s, as sometimes claimed; but Bayreuth was an institution in which Germans were able to recognise themselves and its errors had been those of the whole nation. He went on to declare:
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