Das Judenthum in der Musik
Encyclopedia
Das Judenthum in der Musik (German
: "Jewishness in Music", but normally translated Judaism in Music; spelled after its first publications as ‘Judentum’) is an essay by Richard Wagner
, attacking Jews
in general and the composers Giacomo Meyerbeer
and Felix Mendelssohn
in particular, which was published under a pseudonym
in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik
(NZM) of Leipzig
in September 1850. It was reissued in a greatly expanded version under Wagner’s name in 1869. It is regarded by many as an important landmark in the history of German
antisemitism.
, Wagner gave the excuse that he used a pseudonym "to prevent the question being dragged down by the Jews to a purely personal level".
At the time Wagner was living in exile in Zurich
, on the run after his role in the 1849 revolution
in Dresden
. His article followed a series of essays in the NZM by his disciple Theodor Uhlig
, attacking the music of Meyerbeer’s opera
Le prophète
. Wagner was particularly enraged by the success of Le prophète in Paris
, all the more so because he had earlier been a slavish admirer of Meyerbeer, who had given him financial support and used his influence to get Wagner’s early opera Rienzi
, his first real success, staged in Dresden in 1841.
Wagner was also emboldened by the death of Mendelssohn in 1847, the popularity of whose conservative style he felt was cramping the potential of German music. Although Wagner had shown virtually no sign of anti-Jewish prejudice previously (despite the claims by Rose in his book Wagner, Race and Revolution, and others), he was determined to build on Uhlig’s articles and prepare a broadside that would attack his artistic enemies, embedded in what he took to be a populist Judaeophobic context.
Wagner claims that the work was written to:
Wagner holds that Jews are unable to speak European languages properly and that Jewish speech took the character of an "intolerably jumbled blabber", a "creaking, squeaking, buzzing snuffle", incapable of expressing true passion. This, he says, debars them from any possibility of creating song or music. He also states:
There is little novelty in these ideas, which are largely lifted from the theories of language and speech of the French Philosophes of the 18th century. They also follow on from ideas expressed in Wagner's earlier essay The Artwork of the Future
, to the effect that those who are outside the Volk (community) are inimical to true Art.
The music produced by composers such as Mendelssohn, whom Wagner damns with faint praise
, is "sweet and tinkling without depth". Meyerbeer, who was still alive at the time of publication, is attacked savagely for his music (and for the fact that audiences enjoy it) but without being expressly named.
The essay is riddled with the aggressiveness typical of many Judaeophobic publications of the previous few centuries. However Wagner did introduce one striking new image, which was to be taken up after him by many later antisemitic authors:
Wagner gives some convoluted near-endorsements of the Jewish-born writers Heinrich Heine
and Ludwig Börne
, stating that the former became a poet only because German culture had become inauthentic. It could thus be represented by a Jew, who understood from his very nature its cultural inauthenticity, but who also excoriated its corruption. In this, he was the "conscience of Judaism", just as Judaism is "the evil conscience of our modern civilisation". Wagner then goes on to refer to Börne, a Jewish writer and journalist who converted to Christianity. He tells Jews to follow his example, recommending that they follow Börne by helping to "redeem" German culture by abandoning Judaism.
In the original version of 1850, instead of the word 'self-annulment', Wagner used the words 'the bloody struggle of self-annihilation' - displaying a rather more aggressive approach which was perhaps too blatant for the more widely-known figure he had become by 1868.
and other professors at the Leipzig Conservatory
. Fischer has found virtually no other substantial response. The article, which Wagner had hoped would be a sensation, and bring him some money as a journalist, sank like a stone. Nearly all of Wagner’s associates, including Liszt, were embarrassed by the article and thought it was a passing phase (which it was not) or a mere fit of pique (which, in part, it was).
and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
. An intriguing possibility is that, having received his mother’s correspondence (which he subsequently burnt) from his sister in 1868, he discovered that his biological father was the actor and musician Ludwig Geyer
, and feared that Geyer was Jewish (which he was not) and that he himself might be Jewish as well. He may therefore also have been influenced by thoughts of his wife Cosima
, who was more stridently anti-Semitic than he.
, on Wagner’s side. He also attacked by name the critic Eduard Hanslick
, bringing in reference to the latter's Jewish descent (which Hanslick then attempted to deny).
Once again many of Wagner’s supporters were in despair at the provocation. Even Cosima doubted that it was wise. By this time of course Wagner was a well-known figure and the reprint brought many counter-attacks, amongst which may be mentioned: Joseph Engel, "Richard Wagner, Jewishness in Music, a Defense" ("Richard Wagner, das Judentum in Musik, eine Abwehr"); E. M. Oettinger, "An Open Love-Letter to Richard Wagner" ("Offenes Billetdoux an Richard Wagner", Dresden, 1869); and A. Truhart, "Open Letter to Richard Wagner" ("Offener Brief an Richard Wagner" St. Petersburg, 1869).
However the fuss about the reprint was little more than a storm in a teacup. Far more important, in terms of publicising Wagner's anti-Jewish feelings, was his stream of essays and newspaper articles over following years, up to and including that of his death in 1883, which directly or indirectly criticised Jewish individuals or the Jews as a whole. These coincided with the growth of anti-Semitism—in the sense of a movement to withdraw the civic rights extended to Jews during the 19th century, and particularly on the unification of Germany in 1870—as a significant force in German and Austrian politics. Anti-Semitic leaders indeed made approaches to Wagner requesting his support; although he never offered such support officially, neither did he dissociate himself from their policies.
There are two principal reasons for concern about Ashton's translation of the title. Firstly, 'Judaism' in English carries the meaning of 'the profession or practice of the Jewish religion; the religious system or the polity of the Jews', a topic on which Wagner does not touch. 'Judentum' however in 19th-century Germany carried a much broader meaning — roughly analogous to the nonce
English word 'Jewdom' (cf. Christendom) and including the concept of the social practices of the Jews. In particular it carried the pejorative sense of 'haggling' or 'marketeering' — it was used in this sense for example by Karl Marx
. Undoubtedly Wagner wished to refer to this sense, in effect using the word as a pun
, as the commercialism implied forms the topic of the essay as a whole. It is therefore important to bear in mind the full range of implications of the title-word 'Judentum' in considering the essay as a whole. 'Jewishness', whilst not ideal, is perhaps a closer English approximation to 'Judentum' than 'Judaism'.
, the pianists Carl Tausig
and Joseph Rubinstein, the writer Heinrich Porges
and very many others. In his autobiography, written between 1865 and 1870, he declared that his acquaintance with the Jew Samuel Lehrs whom he knew in Paris in the early 1840s was ‘one of the most beautiful friendships of my life’. There remain, therefore, elements of the enigmatic, and of the opportunist, in Wagner's personal attitude towards Jews.
The notoriety in Germany of Wagner's animus against Jews is attested to in Theodor Fontane
's novel Effi Briest
(1895). Effi's husband Baron von Instetten asks her to play Wagner because of "Wagner's stand on the Jewish question".
period there was just one reprint of the essay itself, in Weimar
in 1914. It is therefore very unlikely that it was read by Hitler or any of the Nazi hierarchy during the development of the Nazi movement (or later) and there is no evidence of this. During the Nazi period there were just two publications: in Berlin
in 1934 and in Leipzig in 1939. Neither of these seem to have been large editions.
"Das Judentum" is not quoted or mentioned by early writers on Nazism in the 1950s such as Hannah Arendt
. Interest in the work seems to have revived in the 1960s with new awareness of the Holocaust
following the Eichmann trial. In this context some have suggested that Wagner's advice for Jews to 'go under' 'like Ahasuerus' was intended as a call for their extermination, as planned by the Nazi regime, but there is no justification for this. In fact the 'Ahasuerus' Wagner seems to have had in mind was a character from a play ( 'Halle und Jerusalem' ) by Achim von Arnim, a 'good' Jew who voluntarily sacrifices himself saving other characters from a fire. Wagner may have meant no more than 'Jews must sacrifice their separate identity for the common good'; the interpretation that he intended murder was never attributed to him before the Nazi policy of physical extermination. Because the Nazis deliberately took 'ownership' of Wagner for their own propaganda purposes, it does not follow logically that one should interpret the composer's writings only in the context of Nazi policies. Wagner died five years before Hitler was born in 1889.
The essay was omitted from the 'complete' edition of Wagner's prose works issued in 1983 on the centenary of his death, because of its perceived link with Nazi anti-Semitism. A scholarly critical edition, with background material and contemporary comments, was prepared by Jens Malte Fischer in 2000.
Some writers (for example, Bryan Magee
) have sought to make a qualified defence of Wagner's originality of thought in "Das Judentum", despite acknowledging its malevolence. However, a full consideration of "Das Judentum"'s contents weakens this argument.
It is perhaps therefore inappropriate to bring forward "Das Judentum" in itself as a major milestone in German anti-Semitism; although Wagner’s attitudes to the Jews in general was highly equivocal. His later writings, published when he was a well-known and influential figure, frequently contain aggressive anti-Jewish comments, although at the same time he maintained a circle of Jewish-born colleagues and admirers.
Adolf Hitler presented himself as an admirer of Wagner's music, and is said to have claimed that "there is only one legitimate predecessor to National Socialism: Wagner". Wagner's music was frequently played during Nazi rallies (as was the music of Beethoven, also 'appropriated' by the Nazis). Wagner's posthumous daughter-in-law, Winifred Wagner
, was an admirer of Adolf Hitler and ran the Bayreuth Festival
of Wagner's music from the death of her husband, Siegfried
, in 1930 until the end of World War II
, when she was ousted. During the Nazi regime, the Nazi hierarchy was frequently required to attend performances of Wagner operas (although they did not necessarily respond enthusiastically). Thus Germans of the Nazi era, even if they knew nothing about music, and knew nothing of Wagner’s writings, were presented with a clear image of the anti-Jewish Wagner as a great German.
Because of these factors, performances of Wagner's works in the modern state of Israel
did not occur during the twentieth century, by consensus. In recent years many Israelis have argued that it is possible to appreciate his musical talents, without implying acceptance of his political or social beliefs. A public performance in Tel Aviv
in 2001 of Wagner’s prelude to Tristan und Isolde
, conducted as an unprogrammed encore by Daniel Barenboim
, left its audience partly delighted, partly enraged.
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
: "Jewishness in Music", but normally translated Judaism in Music; spelled after its first publications as ‘Judentum’) is an essay by Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
, attacking Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
in general and the composers Giacomo Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer was a noted German opera composer, and the first great exponent of "grand opera." At his peak in the 1830s and 1840s, he was the most famous and successful composer of opera in Europe, yet he is rarely performed today.-Early years:He was born to a Jewish family in Tasdorf , near...
and Felix Mendelssohn
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
in particular, which was published under a pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik
Neue Zeitschrift für Musik
Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik was a music magazine published in Leipzig, co-founded by Robert Schumann, his teacher and future father-in law Friedrich Wieck, and his close friend Ludwig Schuncke...
(NZM) of Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
in September 1850. It was reissued in a greatly expanded version under Wagner’s name in 1869. It is regarded by many as an important landmark in the history of German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
antisemitism.
The original article of 1850
The first version of the article appeared in the NZM under the pseudonym of K. Freigedank ("K. Freethought"). In an April 1851 letter to Franz LisztFranz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
, Wagner gave the excuse that he used a pseudonym "to prevent the question being dragged down by the Jews to a purely personal level".
At the time Wagner was living in exile in Zurich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
, on the run after his role in the 1849 revolution
May Uprising in Dresden
The May Uprising took place in Dresden, Germany in 1849; it was one of the last of the series of events known as the Revolutions of 1848.-Events leading to the May Uprising:...
in Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
. His article followed a series of essays in the NZM by his disciple Theodor Uhlig
Theodor Uhlig
Theodor Uhlig was a German viola-player, composer and music critic.-Uhlig and Wagner:...
, attacking the music of Meyerbeer’s opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
Le prophète
Le prophète
Le prophète is an opera in five acts by Giacomo Meyerbeer. The French-language libretto was by Eugène Scribe.-Performance history:...
. Wagner was particularly enraged by the success of Le prophète in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, all the more so because he had earlier been a slavish admirer of Meyerbeer, who had given him financial support and used his influence to get Wagner’s early opera Rienzi
Rienzi
Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen is an early opera by Richard Wagner in five acts, with the libretto written by the composer after Bulwer-Lytton's novel of the same name . The title is commonly shortened to Rienzi...
, his first real success, staged in Dresden in 1841.
Wagner was also emboldened by the death of Mendelssohn in 1847, the popularity of whose conservative style he felt was cramping the potential of German music. Although Wagner had shown virtually no sign of anti-Jewish prejudice previously (despite the claims by Rose in his book Wagner, Race and Revolution, and others), he was determined to build on Uhlig’s articles and prepare a broadside that would attack his artistic enemies, embedded in what he took to be a populist Judaeophobic context.
Wagner claims that the work was written to:
explain to ourselves the involuntary repellence possessed for us by the nature and personality of the Jews, so as to vindicate that instinctive dislike which we plainly recognize as stronger and more overpowering than our conscious zeal to rid ourselves thereof.
Wagner holds that Jews are unable to speak European languages properly and that Jewish speech took the character of an "intolerably jumbled blabber", a "creaking, squeaking, buzzing snuffle", incapable of expressing true passion. This, he says, debars them from any possibility of creating song or music. He also states:
Although the peculiarities of the Jewish mode of speaking and singing come out the most glaringly in the commoner class of Jew, who has remained faithful to his fathers' stock, and though the cultured son of Jewry takes untold pains to strip them off, nevertheless they shew an impertinent obstinacy in cleaving to him.
There is little novelty in these ideas, which are largely lifted from the theories of language and speech of the French Philosophes of the 18th century. They also follow on from ideas expressed in Wagner's earlier essay The Artwork of the Future
The Artwork of the Future
"The Artwork of the Future" is a long essay written by Richard Wagner, first published in 1849 in Leipzig, in which he sets out some of his ideals on the topics of art in general and music drama in particular....
, to the effect that those who are outside the Volk (community) are inimical to true Art.
The music produced by composers such as Mendelssohn, whom Wagner damns with faint praise
Damn with faint praise
Damn with faint praise is an English idiom for words that effectively condemn by seeming to offer praise which is too moderate or marginal to be considered praise at all...
, is "sweet and tinkling without depth". Meyerbeer, who was still alive at the time of publication, is attacked savagely for his music (and for the fact that audiences enjoy it) but without being expressly named.
The essay is riddled with the aggressiveness typical of many Judaeophobic publications of the previous few centuries. However Wagner did introduce one striking new image, which was to be taken up after him by many later antisemitic authors:
So long as the separate art of music had a real organic life-need in it […] there was nowhere to be found a Jewish composer.... Only when a body’s inner death is manifest, do outside elements win the power of lodgement in it—yet merely to destroy it. Then, indeed, that body’s flesh dissolves into a swarming colony of insect life: but who in looking on that body’s self, would hold it still for living?
Wagner gives some convoluted near-endorsements of the Jewish-born writers Heinrich Heine
Heinrich Heine
Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder by composers such as Robert Schumann...
and Ludwig Börne
Ludwig Börne
Karl Ludwig Börne was a German political writer and satirist.-Early life:Karl Ludwig Börne was born Loeb Baruch on May 6, 1786, at Frankfurt am Main, son of Jakob Baruch, a banker. His grandfather had been a government bureaucrat.-Education:Börne and his brothers were privately tutored by Jacob...
, stating that the former became a poet only because German culture had become inauthentic. It could thus be represented by a Jew, who understood from his very nature its cultural inauthenticity, but who also excoriated its corruption. In this, he was the "conscience of Judaism", just as Judaism is "the evil conscience of our modern civilisation". Wagner then goes on to refer to Börne, a Jewish writer and journalist who converted to Christianity. He tells Jews to follow his example, recommending that they follow Börne by helping to "redeem" German culture by abandoning Judaism.
Without once looking back, take ye your part in this regenerative work of deliverance through self-annulment; then are we one and un-dissevered! But bethink ye, that only one thing can redeem you from your curse; the redemption of AhasuerusAhasuerusAhasuerus is a name used several times in the Hebrew Bible, as well as related legends and Apocrypha. This name is applied in the Hebrew Scriptures to three rulers...
— Going under!
In the original version of 1850, instead of the word 'self-annulment', Wagner used the words 'the bloody struggle of self-annihilation' - displaying a rather more aggressive approach which was perhaps too blatant for the more widely-known figure he had become by 1868.
Reception of the 1850 article
It should be borne in mind that NZM had a very small circulation — no more, in JM Fischer’s estimate, than 1500- 2000 readers. Virtually the only response was a letter of complaint to the editor of NZM from Mendelssohn’s old colleague Ignaz MoschelesIgnaz Moscheles
Ignaz Moscheles was a Bohemian composer and piano virtuoso, whose career after his early years was based initially in London, and later at Leipzig, where he succeeded his friend and sometime pupil Felix Mendelssohn as head of the Conservatoire.-Sources:Much of what we know about Moscheles's life...
and other professors at the Leipzig Conservatory
Felix Mendelssohn College of Music and Theatre
The University of Music and Theatre "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy" Leipzig is a public university in Leipzig . Founded in 1843 by Felix Mendelssohn as the Conservatory of Music, it is the oldest university school of music in Germany....
. Fischer has found virtually no other substantial response. The article, which Wagner had hoped would be a sensation, and bring him some money as a journalist, sank like a stone. Nearly all of Wagner’s associates, including Liszt, were embarrassed by the article and thought it was a passing phase (which it was not) or a mere fit of pique (which, in part, it was).
1850–1869
In his major theoretical statement, "Oper und Drama" (1852), Wagner made similar objections about Meyerbeer. But otherwise, although Wagner’s personal letters contain occasional jibes about Jews and Judaism, there was no suggestion over future years that he was likely to return to the attack or revive his earlier anonymous article. However in his notebook for 1868 (known as the 'Brown Book') there appear the ominous words "Consider Judentum." It is not clear what provoked this. Amongst the contributing factors may be the death of his ‘enemy’ Meyerbeer in 1864, Wagner’s own relative security under the patronage of the King of Bavaria, and increase in his personal confidence now that his Ring cycle was under way and he had completed his operas Tristan und IsoldeTristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the romance by Gottfried von Straßburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting...
and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is an opera in three acts, written and composed by Richard Wagner. It is among the longest operas still commonly performed today, usually taking around four and a half hours. It was first performed at the Königliches Hof- und National-Theater in Munich, on June 21,...
. An intriguing possibility is that, having received his mother’s correspondence (which he subsequently burnt) from his sister in 1868, he discovered that his biological father was the actor and musician Ludwig Geyer
Ludwig Geyer
Ludwig Geyer was a German actor, playwright and painter.Born in Eisleben, he was the stepfather of composer Richard Wagner, whose biological father had died some six months after his birth...
, and feared that Geyer was Jewish (which he was not) and that he himself might be Jewish as well. He may therefore also have been influenced by thoughts of his wife Cosima
Cosima Wagner
Cosima Francesca Gaetana Wagner, née de Flavigny, from 1844 known as Cosima Liszt; was the daughter of Hungarian composer Franz Liszt...
, who was more stridently anti-Semitic than he.
The 1869 version and after
For reasons which remain unclear, in 1869 Wagner republished the essay with an addendum as long as the original, and under his own name. The first part was reprinted as in 1850, with some references toned down, as in the example already given. With a confidence lacking in the original frenetic effort, the second (new) part seeks to contextualise Wagner’s anti-Jewish feelings in the setting of later nineteenth-century German politics, whilst continuing to snipe at the dead Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer and bringing in other dead musicians, including SchumannRobert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
, on Wagner’s side. He also attacked by name the critic Eduard Hanslick
Eduard Hanslick
Eduard Hanslick was a Bohemian-Austrian music critic.-Biography:Hanslick was born in Prague, the son of Joseph Adolph Hanslick, a bibliographer and music teacher from a German-speaking family, and one of his piano pupils, the daughter of a Jewish merchant from Vienna...
, bringing in reference to the latter's Jewish descent (which Hanslick then attempted to deny).
Once again many of Wagner’s supporters were in despair at the provocation. Even Cosima doubted that it was wise. By this time of course Wagner was a well-known figure and the reprint brought many counter-attacks, amongst which may be mentioned: Joseph Engel, "Richard Wagner, Jewishness in Music, a Defense" ("Richard Wagner, das Judentum in Musik, eine Abwehr"); E. M. Oettinger, "An Open Love-Letter to Richard Wagner" ("Offenes Billetdoux an Richard Wagner", Dresden, 1869); and A. Truhart, "Open Letter to Richard Wagner" ("Offener Brief an Richard Wagner" St. Petersburg, 1869).
However the fuss about the reprint was little more than a storm in a teacup. Far more important, in terms of publicising Wagner's anti-Jewish feelings, was his stream of essays and newspaper articles over following years, up to and including that of his death in 1883, which directly or indirectly criticised Jewish individuals or the Jews as a whole. These coincided with the growth of anti-Semitism—in the sense of a movement to withdraw the civic rights extended to Jews during the 19th century, and particularly on the unification of Germany in 1870—as a significant force in German and Austrian politics. Anti-Semitic leaders indeed made approaches to Wagner requesting his support; although he never offered such support officially, neither did he dissociate himself from their policies.
The title in English
The article's first translator into English, W. Ashton Ellis, gave it the title 'Judaism in Music'. This translation has seemed unsatisfactory to some Wagner scholars. For example, Barry Millington refers to it as 'Jewishness in Music'.There are two principal reasons for concern about Ashton's translation of the title. Firstly, 'Judaism' in English carries the meaning of 'the profession or practice of the Jewish religion; the religious system or the polity of the Jews', a topic on which Wagner does not touch. 'Judentum' however in 19th-century Germany carried a much broader meaning — roughly analogous to the nonce
Nonce word
A nonce word is a word used only "for the nonce"—to meet a need that is not expected to recur. Quark, for example, was formerly a nonce word in English, appearing only in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Murray Gell-Mann then adopted it to name a new class of subatomic particle...
English word 'Jewdom' (cf. Christendom) and including the concept of the social practices of the Jews. In particular it carried the pejorative sense of 'haggling' or 'marketeering' — it was used in this sense for example by Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
. Undoubtedly Wagner wished to refer to this sense, in effect using the word as a pun
Pun
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...
, as the commercialism implied forms the topic of the essay as a whole. It is therefore important to bear in mind the full range of implications of the title-word 'Judentum' in considering the essay as a whole. 'Jewishness', whilst not ideal, is perhaps a closer English approximation to 'Judentum' than 'Judaism'.
Wagner and the Jews
Notwithstanding his public utterances against Jewish influence in music, and even his utterances against specific Jews, Wagner had numerous Jewish friends and supporters even in his later period. Included amongst these were his favourite conductor Hermann LeviHermann Levi
Hermann Levi was a German Jewish orchestral conductor.Levi was born in Gießen, Germany, the son of a rabbi. He was educated at Gießen and Mannheim, and came to Vinzenz Lachner's notice...
, the pianists Carl Tausig
Carl Tausig
Carl Tausig was a Polish virtuoso pianist, arranger and composer.-Life:Tausig was born in Warsaw to Jewish parents and received his first piano lessons from his father, pianist and composer Aloys Tausig, a student of Sigismond Thalberg. His father introduced him to Franz Liszt in Weimar at the...
and Joseph Rubinstein, the writer Heinrich Porges
Heinrich Porges
Heinrich Porges was a Czech-Austrian choirmaster, music critic and writer of Jewish descent.-Life:...
and very many others. In his autobiography, written between 1865 and 1870, he declared that his acquaintance with the Jew Samuel Lehrs whom he knew in Paris in the early 1840s was ‘one of the most beautiful friendships of my life’. There remain, therefore, elements of the enigmatic, and of the opportunist, in Wagner's personal attitude towards Jews.
The notoriety in Germany of Wagner's animus against Jews is attested to in Theodor Fontane
Theodor Fontane
Theodor Fontane was a German novelist and poet, regarded by many as the most important 19th-century German-language realist writer.-Youth:Fontane was born in Neuruppin into a Huguenot family. At the age of sixteen he was apprenticed to an apothecary, his father's profession. He became an...
's novel Effi Briest
Effi Briest
Effi Briest is widely considered to be Theodor Fontane’s masterpiece and one of the most famous German realist novels of all time. Thomas Mann once said that if one had to reduce one’s library to six novels, Effi Briest would have to be one of them...
(1895). Effi's husband Baron von Instetten asks her to play Wagner because of "Wagner's stand on the Jewish question".
Recent reception
"Das Judentum" was an embarrassment to the early Wagnerites and was rarely reprinted in the early 20th century, except as part of his collected works. Fischer has found no significant critical comment on the essay. Before the NaziNazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
period there was just one reprint of the essay itself, in Weimar
Weimar
Weimar is a city in Germany famous for its cultural heritage. It is located in the federal state of Thuringia , north of the Thüringer Wald, east of Erfurt, and southwest of Halle and Leipzig. Its current population is approximately 65,000. The oldest record of the city dates from the year 899...
in 1914. It is therefore very unlikely that it was read by Hitler or any of the Nazi hierarchy during the development of the Nazi movement (or later) and there is no evidence of this. During the Nazi period there were just two publications: in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
in 1934 and in Leipzig in 1939. Neither of these seem to have been large editions.
"Das Judentum" is not quoted or mentioned by early writers on Nazism in the 1950s such as Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt was a German American political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact...
. Interest in the work seems to have revived in the 1960s with new awareness of the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
following the Eichmann trial. In this context some have suggested that Wagner's advice for Jews to 'go under' 'like Ahasuerus' was intended as a call for their extermination, as planned by the Nazi regime, but there is no justification for this. In fact the 'Ahasuerus' Wagner seems to have had in mind was a character from a play ( 'Halle und Jerusalem' ) by Achim von Arnim, a 'good' Jew who voluntarily sacrifices himself saving other characters from a fire. Wagner may have meant no more than 'Jews must sacrifice their separate identity for the common good'; the interpretation that he intended murder was never attributed to him before the Nazi policy of physical extermination. Because the Nazis deliberately took 'ownership' of Wagner for their own propaganda purposes, it does not follow logically that one should interpret the composer's writings only in the context of Nazi policies. Wagner died five years before Hitler was born in 1889.
The essay was omitted from the 'complete' edition of Wagner's prose works issued in 1983 on the centenary of his death, because of its perceived link with Nazi anti-Semitism. A scholarly critical edition, with background material and contemporary comments, was prepared by Jens Malte Fischer in 2000.
Some writers (for example, Bryan Magee
Bryan Magee
Bryan Edgar Magee is a noted British broadcasting personality, politician, poet, and author, best known as a popularizer of philosophy.-Early life:...
) have sought to make a qualified defence of Wagner's originality of thought in "Das Judentum", despite acknowledging its malevolence. However, a full consideration of "Das Judentum"'s contents weakens this argument.
It is perhaps therefore inappropriate to bring forward "Das Judentum" in itself as a major milestone in German anti-Semitism; although Wagner’s attitudes to the Jews in general was highly equivocal. His later writings, published when he was a well-known and influential figure, frequently contain aggressive anti-Jewish comments, although at the same time he maintained a circle of Jewish-born colleagues and admirers.
Adolf Hitler presented himself as an admirer of Wagner's music, and is said to have claimed that "there is only one legitimate predecessor to National Socialism: Wagner". Wagner's music was frequently played during Nazi rallies (as was the music of Beethoven, also 'appropriated' by the Nazis). Wagner's posthumous daughter-in-law, Winifred Wagner
Winifred Wagner
Winifred Wagner was an English woman married to Siegfried Wagner, Richard Wagner's son. She was the effective head of the Wagner family from 1930 to 1945, and a close friend of German dictator Adolf Hitler....
, was an admirer of Adolf Hitler and ran the Bayreuth Festival
Bayreuth Festival
The Bayreuth Festival is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th century German composer Richard Wagner are presented...
of Wagner's music from the death of her husband, Siegfried
Siegfried Wagner
Siegfried Wagner was a German composer and conductor, the son of Richard Wagner. He was an opera composer and the artistic director of the Bayreuth Festival from 1908 to 1930.-Life:...
, in 1930 until the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, when she was ousted. During the Nazi regime, the Nazi hierarchy was frequently required to attend performances of Wagner operas (although they did not necessarily respond enthusiastically). Thus Germans of the Nazi era, even if they knew nothing about music, and knew nothing of Wagner’s writings, were presented with a clear image of the anti-Jewish Wagner as a great German.
Because of these factors, performances of Wagner's works in the modern state of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
did not occur during the twentieth century, by consensus. In recent years many Israelis have argued that it is possible to appreciate his musical talents, without implying acceptance of his political or social beliefs. A public performance in Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
in 2001 of Wagner’s prelude to Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the romance by Gottfried von Straßburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting...
, conducted as an unprogrammed encore by Daniel Barenboim
Daniel Barenboim
Daniel Barenboim, KBE is an Argentinian-Israeli pianist and conductor. He has served as music director of several major symphonic and operatic orchestras and made numerous recordings....
, left its audience partly delighted, partly enraged.
Sources
- Dennis, David R. Beethoven in German Politics, 1870-1989, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1996
- Fischer, Jens Malte. Richard Wagners 'Das Judentum in der Musik' (in German). Frankfurt: Insel Verlag 2000. ISBN 9783458343172
- Fontane, Theodor tr. Hugh Rorrison and Helen Chambers, Effi Briest. London:Penguin, 1995
- Magee, Bryan. Aspects of Wagner. Oxford 1988. ISBN 0-19-284012-6
- Millington, Barry (Ed.) The Wagner Compendium: A Guide to Wagner's Life and Music. Thames and Hudson Ltd., London 1992. ISBN 0028713591
- Rose, Paul Lawrence. Wagner: Race and Revolution. London 1992. ISBN 0-571-17888-X
- Spotts, Frederick. Bayreuth: A History of the Wagner Festival, Yale University Press (1996) ISBN 0-300-06665-1
- Wagner, Richard (trans. W. Ashton Ellis). Judaism in Music and other Writings. London 1995. ISBN 0-8032-9766-1
- Wagner,Richard, ed. D. Borchmeyer Richard Wagner: Dichtungen und Schriften Jubiläumsaufgabe, 10 vols. Insel Verlag, Frankfurt, 1983
- Full text in English (Ellis's translation)
- Das Judenthum in der Musik (1869) – full text (german)