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The Effect of Richard Wagner’s Music and Beliefs
provincial city prepared the way and made it possible
for me to appreciate the better productions later on.
26
Hitler himself admits his infatuation with Wagner, saying that from the
very first time he saw a production of one of Wagner’s operas he was
enraptured by it. This primary source supports the truthfulness of
secondary accounts written by men such as Köhler and Kater.
In addition to Hitler’s words in
Mein Kampf
, he also spoke highly of
Wagner to others. Take, for example, his words to Rauschnigg as
recorded in the book
Hitler Speaks
: “I recognize in Wagner my only
predecessor. . . . I regard him as a supreme prophetic figure.”
27
This quote
provides the most compelling and accurate evidence for the connection
between these two men, more so than any other piece of evidence. It
gives one the full sense of Hitler’s awe of him. This was not a mere liking
of another man’s music; this was a full-fledged idolatry of another man.
Hitler admitted to the world that Wagner served as his inspiration. He,
apparently, told one of his architects that Wagner’s music was the cause
that inspired him to unite the German nation.
28
“Wagner was his kindred
spirit, his forerunner, his John the Baptist; Wagner portrayed what he,
Hitler, a greater than Wagner, was to translate into reality.”
29
Wagner
encapsulated all that Hitler believed in—the superiority of the German
race—and it was this superiority that Hitler sought to protect and
implement.
30
Although Hitler was impressionable, there must have been something
else, other than the music, that drew Hitler to Wagner. Richard Wagner’s
works are regarded highly and are often considered among musicians to
be the epitome of German Romantic music. But, a composer’s work
alone is rarely enough to elicit such strong devotion. Hans Rudolf Vaget
points out a remark in which Hitler said, referring to a performance of
26
Adolf Hitler,
Mein Kampf: The Official 1939 Edition
, trans. James Murphy,
(Warwickshire, UK: Coda, 2011), 20.
27
Robert L. Jacobs, “Wagner’s Influence on Hitler,”
Music & Letters
(Oxford
University) 22, no. 1 (1941): 81.
28
Ronald Taylor, introduction to
Wagner’s Hitler: The Prophet and
His Disciple
, by Joachim Köhler, trans. Ronald Taylor (Cambridge: Polity,
2000), 3.
29
Jacobs, “Wagner’s Influence on Hitler,” 82.
30
DeLora J. Neuschwander, “Music in the Third Reich,”
Musical Offerings
(Cedarville University)
3, no. 2 (2012): 99.