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Musical Offerings
⦁
2016
⦁
Volume 7
⦁
Number 2
61
much of Wagner as he could. According to Joachim Köhler, Hitler
claimed in 1925 to have seen all of Wagner’s operas many times and
have spent his last penny just to be able to listen to his music.
Supposedly, Hitler saw
Tristan und Isolde
at least thirty or forty times
and knew much of the opera by heart, able to sing and hum it at a whim.
23
Winifred Wagner, daughter-in-law to Richard Wagner, stated that Hitler
was “addicted” to his music. This obsession for Wagner’s music is made
apparent by his possession of many of the original opera scores.
24
For
example, according to Michael Kater in his book
The Twisted Muse:
Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich
, Hitler kept the piano
score of
Tristan und Isolde
in his knapsack while a soldier in World War
I.
25
While possessing someone’s work would not necessarily suggest
allegiance to or support of that composer, Hitler’s close keeping of the
piece while in the war suggests that he felt comforted by Wagner’s
music. In Hitler’s case, his unusual ownership of Wagner’s original
scores is evidence of his love for his music.
The words of Hitler himself also provide evidence which is difficult to
ignore, effectively debunking any attempts of freeing Wagner from this
association with the Third Reich. Hitler commended Wagner on
numerous occasions, whether in conversation with people he knew, in
several of his letters, or even in his book,
Mein Kampf.
He wrote in
Mein
Kampf
this memoir about his love for Wagner’s music:
A precocious revolutionary in politics I was no less a
precocious revolutionary in art. At that time the
provincial capital of Upper Austria had a theatre which,
relatively speaking, was not bad. Almost everything was
played there. When I was twelve years old I saw
William
Tell
performed. That was my first experience of the
theatre. Some months later I attended a performance of
Lohengrin
, the first opera I had ever heard. I was
fascinated at once. My youthful enthusiasm for the
Bayreuth Master knew no limits. Again and again I was
drawn to hear his operas; and to-day I consider it a great
piece of luck that these modest productions in the little
23
Joachim Köhler,
Wagner’s Hitler: The Prophet and His Disciple
(Cambridge: Polity, 2000),
54–55.
24
Ibid., 13–14.
25
Michael H. Kater,
The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the
Third Reich
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 36.