Trudy Gold
Wagner, the Jews, and his Legacy

Trudy Gold - Wagner, the Jews, and his Legacy

- All right, good evening everyone. And this, of course, is the second part of my presentation on Wagner. And let me say from the outset, I have not the temerity to discuss Wagner’s music with you. The reason we are doing this is that when Patrick chose his favourite operas, he chose “Lohengrin” and Wendy very sensibly said, “This is such a controversial issue. Why don’t you open it up?” And what I’m trying to do is to walk that very, very, very careful path because Wagner is one of the subjects that causes such fury, and it divides people completely. There are some people who absolutely adore him as one of the greatest cultural figures of the 19th century. And really, if you like, the much of the modern music that followed is because of Wagner, that he was a towering figure musically and he changed the face of modern music, and he was really the greatest artist that Germany produced in the 19th century. There are others who say his antisemitism was so dark and terrible that what he and his circle did was to make antisemitism respectable. And he is, therefore, and because his operas had such an impact on Hitler, you’ll remember I mentioned it last week, that “Rienzi,” one of his earliest operas was the first opera that Hitler ever heard when he was 16 years old in Linz. And Kubizek, his friend, who wrote his autobiography, he explains the kind of impact that “Rienzi” had on Hitler.

And of course, Hitler had the overture played in the Nuremberg rallies. And he did say, to understand national socialism, you have to understand Wagner. But having said that, Wagner died in 1883. So, what do we do with this figure? And what I’m going to do today is really to further muddy the waters, because I want to look at some of the individuals that Wagner associated with. And I’m going to suggest to you that yes, he was a notorious antisemite. He did make antisemitism very respectable in cultural circles but it also has to be said that by the 1860s, antisemitism was a very dark disease. And I just want to talk a little bit about that because I was talking to Patrick Bade about it the other week. I was talking about, I think it was Schumann. And of course Schumann was a terrible antisemite. The level of antisemitism in cultural circles was very, very high. And it had a lot to do with the extraordinary visible success story of the Jews working in the German language. And I think the tragedy of the Jew in Germany is particularly poignant because they fell so much in love with German culture. Einstein said something interesting, because he begun later on after this First World War, he’s the most famous scientist in the world. And he said, “The Germans treat me a little like a carnation in their bottom, that for a little while they smell it in its fragrance and then it becomes, then it goes off and they have to get rid of it.” I think one of the great tragedies is the majority of German Jews and they were a very small number, you know, the majority of German Jews were so desperate to be German and they gave so much to German culture.

If you want to know more in depth on this subject, the book that I highly recommend, I think the best book on German Jewry is “The Pity of It All” by Igdal Elon, it is a brilliant, brilliant book. There are many books on German Jewry, but if you’ve only got the time to read one, that is the book that you should read. And I am not recommending a book on Wagner, it’s too controversial. I’m going to opt out of it and I’m going to leave it to Patrick to recommend. But so we left Wagner when he’d had a stroke of luck. He comes under the sway, of course, of Ludwig of Bavaria, Ludwig who is such a complicated, fascinating character. I really recommend you read a biography of Ludwig as well. And I showed you last on, I showed you on Tuesday the pictures of his fairytale castles. He was a very remote isolated man, but he had adored, he had adored Wagner’s music. And of course when he becomes king, an autocratic king, he has the money to play and one of the first people he wants to meet is Wagner. And basically he settles all his debts. They do have quite a fractious relationship because Wagner, although Ludwig as a young man absolutely adored Wagner. As I said to you on Tuesday, Wagner was a very unpleasant character. He was an autocrat, he was an egoist, he was probably an narcissist. And he demanded total blind obedience. He was always in debt. He was a terrible womaniser. And actually Ludwig did not like his antisemitism.

There was an incident over a relationship he had with a Jew, Hermann Levi, who was the conductor of Wagner’s orchestra, and I’ll talk about that later, where Ludwig actually said, “Nothing is more repugnant than such squabbles, people after all are brothers in spite of all their denominational differences.” So although Ludwig adored Wagner, adored his art rather, and he did in fact decorate many of the rooms in the castles, two Wagner’s operas, and he was transported by Wagner’s operas, when Wagner, when he comes under Ludwig’s patronage, from now on his operas are going to be premiered first in the opera house in Munich. And later on, Ludwig is going to prepare, he’s actually going to allow him to have the money fought Bayreuth where he has his own dream of the future of opera and that’s where his operas are going to be played. So basically Ludwig saves him. The man was always in debt, he was incredibly extravagant, and it’s Ludwig who saves him, but because of his art, I’m going to finish the story of Ludwig because he’s such a complicated character. As I said to you, his closest relationship was with Empress Elisabeth of Austria, who was also his cousin. And I’m going to be lecturing on her next term when we look at the Habsburgs. She was an incredibly beautiful Faye creature, also very philosemitic. And she’s going to be assassinated by an anarchist. But what happens to Ludwig is he becomes more and more remote from his people, more and more remote from his government. His brother is actually incarcerated into an asylum. And finally Ludwig, he just spends too much money, he is too errant, and his advisors, with the blessing of his uncle, they actually take him into captivity and he dies.

There is a drowning in the lake. Who was he drowned by? His doctor. Was he murdered? It’s still a bit of a story but Ludwig dies and by that time, Wagner is already dead but I really do think you should read a biography of Ludwig because Bavaria was the second most important state in Germany. And one of the reasons Bismarck found it so easy to become the premier state in Germany was because of Ludwig of Bavaria. The fact that he was only interested in art, he was interested in beauty, he was not interested in politics, although for a long time he was popular with his people. But I wanted to state quite very strongly, although he adores Wagner and his art, he doesn’t like his antisemitism. And there was another character who also didn’t like Wagner’s antisemitism. I’ve already had one disagreement with one of our students who said that in fact listed was philosemitic. On the contrary, everything I’ve read about list, he certainly wasn’t, that he didn’t have the kind of hatred that Wagner had. But some of his letters have a very antisemitic tone and back on the subject of antisemitism, before we come on to Frederick Nietzsche, I want to say that by the 1860s, 1870s, you have this visible success story of Jews in Germany out of all proportion to their numbers.

For example, the richest man in Germany was Henry Strousberg. Jews in the banking industry in many of the, what we would call modern trades and professions. You know what Bismarck said about the Jews? He said The Jews are the champagne in German society. They give it the fizz. But he does nothing to stop the antisemitism, as he later said, because of its courageous stand against liberalism and socialism. The autocratic Bismarck who unifies Germany in 1871, he rules through imperial decree the rule of the Kaiser and what horrifies him more than anything else is liberalism and socialism. And the leader of German socialism was of course Ferdinand Lassalle, who was himself a Jew. So although he, by the way, he was a friend of Wagner’s, I beg your pardon, he was a friend of Bismarcks, nevertheless, you have the chancellor of Germany doing nothing to stop antisemitism because all the focus of discontent in a Germany that is united in 1871, that by the turn of the century is one of the great industrial powers of the world. You can just imagine what that had done to the populants, You can imagine what it had done to the poor. If you look, there’s no poor law reform. In fact, Disraeli who was friendly with Bismarck, he begged him to do something, do something about it or there’s going to be a revolution. So Bismarck, the autocrat who makes Germany great but you’ve got this seething discontent. And in 1873 the stock market collapsed and many of the German middle classes lost all their savings and of course they look for the scapegoat. Jews are prominent in capitalism just as they’re prominent in communism.

So you find the perfect scapegoat. And let me say again, I have to say this time, blue in the face, the communist Jews did not see themselves as Jewish and many of the so-called capitalist Jews, they had converted, they saw themselves as German. In fact, conversion and intermarriage in Germany was so high that by the early 1920s it’s running at 45% which is higher than anywhere else in the world. But you do have the notion that the Jew does become this successful people who fall in love with German culture who push it forward and they can’t, if you like, almost they can’t bear the hatred. And yet there was one man who is incredibly complicated and I’m not going to try and explain Nietzsche and philosophy. In fact, there are a couple of people online who are far more able to do it than I, and I’m trying to persuade them to speak. But what I am going to look at specifically is Nietzsche and the Jews. Can we see a picture of Nietzsche, please? Flip if you don’t mind, Judi. Let’s flick through Cosima, straight to Nietzsche. Is that possible, Judi? Yeah. There you have Frederick Nietzsche. One of the most complicated of the 19th century philosophers. A man who’s had such an impact on 20th century thought. Now, Nietzsche admires Wagner and he becomes part of the circle of Wagner and Cosima. They have a court and Nietzsche, this brilliant young man, becomes very close to Cosima. She really, really rates him and at first, Wagner seduces Nietzsche.

But Nietzsche himself has a lot of reservations and in the end they’re going to quarrel about it. The point about Nietzsche, one of the reasons Nietzsche is thought of in many circles as an antisemite is that in fact, of course Nietzsche, Nietzsche has a complete mental collapse. Nine years before he dies, he has a collapse in Turin. The last act that he does of any real human contact is with a horse. He then has a complete collapse and he’s taken into the care of his sister, Elizabeth Forster. And Elizabeth Forster was an incredibly strong German nationalist. Her husband, Fred Forster was an antisemite par excellence. He actually went off to South America for a while and set up an Aryan colony. And Elizabeth becomes a great supporter of what becomes the Nazi party. And so that’s where it comes from. It’s not Nietzsche himself. And so I’m just going to read one or two of Nietzsche’s statements on the Jews. Having said that much of cultural opinion in Germany now because of Wagner’s circle is violently antisemitic because it also added to that the economic problems, and also added to that, that a man called von Treitschke, who is the professor of history at Berlin University, the whole of the general staff goes to his lectures. One of his great statements is, “The Jews are our misfortune.” So you have this people who are trying so hard to be part of it and on the other hand you have important, like the professor of history at University of Berlin, nationalist professors, the rise of nationalism in Germany, which is spinning over it into racism. The notion of the growth of the notion of the Aryan superman, which is added to by the content of Wagner’s operas. And now we have Nietzsche who for a while is part of Wagner’s circle but then breaks with him. And this is, I’m just going to read a couple of his statements on the Jews.

This is from “Beyond Good and Evil.” “What does Europe owe to the Jews? Many things, good and bad, and above all, one thing of the nature of both of the best and the worst: their grand style in morality, the fearfulness and majesty of infinite demands, of infinite significations, the whole romanticism and the sublimity of moral questionableness, and consequently just the most attractive in staring and exquisite element in those allurements to life.” Basically what he’s saying is, the notion of Jewish morality, et cetera, et cetera, it gives a greater law. And he also said, “I want all antisemites shot.” Interesting, but this is, I think that was a bit too dense. So let me read something a little less dense. This is again from “Beyond Good and Evil.” “The Jews are beyond all doubt the strongest, toughest, and purest race at present living in Europe. They know how to succeed even under the worst conditions by means of virtues of some sort above all to a resolute faith, which does not need to be ashamed before modern ideas. It is certain that the Jews, if they desired or if they were driven to it as the antisemite seem to wish, could have the ascendancy, nay, the supremacy over Europe.” Let me repeat that. “It is certain that the Jews, if they are desired or if they were driven to it as the antisemite seem to wish, could have the ascendancy nay the supremacy over Europe.” Even he is saying, Jews as capitalist Jews, as communist Jews in the arts, et cetera, “That they are not working and planning for that is equally certain. Meanwhile, they wish and desire even somewhat importunely to be absorbed by Europe.” You see, he saw it. The Jew wanted so much to be accepted as a German.

They long to be finally settled, authorised, and respected somewhere, and wished to put an end to their nomadic life to the wandering Jew. And one more before we go on and he wrote a lot about the Jews. One of the spectacles which the next century will invite is to witness the decision regarding the fate of European Jews. “It is quite obvious now that they have crossed their Rubicon, the only thing that remains for them is either to become masters of Europe or to lose Europe. In Europe they have gone through a schooling of 18 centuries as no nation has ever undergone. As a consequence, the resourcefulness of the modern Jew, both in mind and soul is extraordinary. Amongst all the inhabitants of Europe is the Jew least of all, who tries to escape from deep distress by which cause to drunkenness and suicide as other less gifted people are prone to do.” He’s saying the Jews face it. Every Jew can find in the history of his own family and his ancestors a long record of the greatest, coolest, and perseverance amidst difficulties and dreadful situations an artful cunning in fighting misfortune and hazard. Above all, it is their bravery under the cloak of wretched submission that surpasses the virtue of all the saints. People wish to make them contemptible for nearly 20 centuries and refuse them access to all honourable positions and dignities. They have never ceased to believe in themselves, qualified for the very highest function, their manner of honouring their parents and children, the rationality of their marriages distinguishes them amongst all Europeans.

Besides this, they’ve been able to create for themselves a sense of power and eternal vengeance from the very tirades that were left to them.“ Okay. So I could go on, but I think enough. I’ll just finish one with one last. "Many good things, good and bad above all, one thing of nature, both at its best and its worst.” So basically he’s very, very interested in the Jews, he loathes Wagner’s antisemitism and in the end for other reasons as well, he breaks with Wagner. Now can we go on please, Judi? Okay, back to Ludwig. As I said to you, Ludwig allows in the end the creation of Bayreuth because he finances it. Even though by this time he and Wagner have problems, he understands that Wagner is money-grubbing, that he expects him to pick up all the bills and find that, you know, Wagner had the idea, the dream of creating his own centre where he could perform his operas as he believed in his extraordinary genius that they should be performed. At first he thought it should happen either in Weimar or in Zurich. But remember at that period he was a nomad and there was no help. Finally though, because by this time he’s become a very, very important cultural figure, most of his great operas have already been shown in Munich because Ludwig is financing them. And Ludwig sometimes would go to the, he would actually go to a performance on his own because he just wanted to soak in the beauty. He was obsessed with the music.

And finally, on the 22nd of January, 1872, beg your pardon, the foundation stone is laid. And the 13th of August, 1876, the first festival was held at Bayreuth, can we see a picture of Bayreuth, if you don’t mind, Judi? Yeah. There you see in the external. No, can you go back? That’s it, see you see the theatre and there you see the opera house in Bayreuth And in August 17, in 1873, before the first festival was actually held, there was an incredible firework display to announce the future festival and it took a while to get it together. And in November 1874, the ring was completed with Gotterdammerung and the following summer rehearsals. And in Bayreuth you’re going to have Siegfried in 1871, you’re going to have Gotterdammerung, beg pardon, that was in Munich. You’re going to have Gotterdammerung in Bayreuth, “Tristan and Isolde,” and then the Meistersinger later on. So basically the first one in Bayreuth is Siegfried and the Parsifal was premiered on the 22nd, the 26th of July, 1882, six months before Wagner died. So he does live, he does live to see the completion of his dream. And the man who was his great conductor was a Jew called Hermann Levi. Now Hermann Levi is absolutely fascinating.

Can we see his picture please? He was the son of a rabbi and he, Ludwig got very angry with Wagner over his treatment of Levi. Levi was so much enthralled by Wagner’s music that he was prepared to put up with all sorts of insults, both from Wagner and from Cosima, and ironically, but Wagner realised just how good Levi was. So they had this very strange, almost co-dependent relationship where Wagner despises Levi as a Jew, but admires his prowess. And ironically, believe it or not, Levi was a pallbearer at Wagner’s funeral. Wagner finally dies in 1883 just before his 70th birthday, and he dies in, he actually dies in Italy. Can we see the Palazzo? Can you jump onto the Palazzo? That’s where he died in 1883. It’s now one of the city’s casinos. And Cosima and he had a terrible row over Wagner and another woman but by this time he was quite ill. He dies in 1883. And as I mentioned last week, the whole of the cultural life of Germany was absolutely devastated and there were processions through Germany at all the universities in the German-speaking world, not just in the German universities, but of course in the University of Vienna, where of course it was the young Theodor Herzl who was absolutely mortified. He’d joined a student fraternity, the young… He’d moved to Vienna in 1880. He’d gone to the University of Vienna to study law. He was a very good-looking, arrogant young man, and he joined one of the fraternities. He was very popular.

But then after the Wagner death, the students go on in March, it’s terribly antisemitic and he becomes very, very upset. He offers his resignation unto his ora, they accept it. Schnitzler talked a lot about, Schnitzler, of course, the great writer who was at the university at the same time, he talked a lot about seeing Herzl at the university. And ironically, this was one of the planks that led to Zionism. The death of Wagner, the antisemitism that erupted in all these funeral possessions, it puts Herzl on the road to Zionism, ironically, of course. But Herzl adored Wagner’s operas. And he would go to the opera house in Vienna. And what did he love most? He loved Wagner’s operas and he dreamt that they would be played in Palestine, in “Altneuland,” his other book, “The Old New Land.” When finally the dream comes to reality, there will be opera houses. What Herzl or wanted was really German-speaking, Austrian Germany in Palestine. He wanted a Jewish home, which homeland, which would be really filled with European culture. And what culture did he want? He wanted the culture of the German-speaking world. That was the world he came from. Yes, he was born in Budapest, but that was in the Habsburg Empire too. So do you see all these ironies of fate? But when Wagner dies, he dies an unrepentant Jew hater. But if we could slip back a slide now to Houston Stewart Chamberlain, if you don’t mind, Judi. Yes because the point I’m making now, there you see the great Theodor Herzl, 44 years old when he died, the man who created political Zionism.

And isn’t this ironic because out of Wagner’s followers is going to come the most appalling antisemitism, which becomes murderous and out of this parade, this march, this is the first plank on the road to political Zionism. Look, Theodor Herzl remember, did not create Zionism. The term was not coined till 1891 by Nathan Birnbaum but the ideas were already there. But what was the genius of Herzl? He made it into a political movement. And never forget that when Israel was proclaimed by David Ben-Gurion on May the 14th, 1948, it’s under a portrait of Theodor Herzl. So this is absolutely crucial. But the Theodor Herzl who adored Wagner’s operas, who was such a German biculture, the man of the Habsburg Empire, it’s fascinating how it all kind of comes together. But can we go on now to the portrait of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, if you could go back, Judi. Thank you. That’s the one I want. I’m so sorry, Judi, as ever. I go in the wrong order. Now, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, it’s he who is far more responsible for the spreading of these racist ideas than in many ways, than Wagner. Wagner is the cultural figure imbued with antisemitism. The man you’re looking at now on the road to, I’m not going to say making antisemitism respectful ‘cause it’s already respectable. The term is coined till 1878 by Wilhelm Marr, a German journalist, but already it’s in respectable circles, religious circles and the court chaplain to the Kaiser, a man called Adolf Stoecker. He actually, he believed in the blood libel. He collected a petition in the year before Wagner died, actually asking for the repeal of Jewish emancipation.

What is fascinating is how Jews dealt with it. They still fell in love with Germany, its culture, its art, its music. Don’t forget when in the world of art that one he’s so interested in. What did they, most of the modern art dealers were Jewish. That was held against them. They don’t understand the beauty of real art. Many of the modern musicians are going to be Jewish, people like Schoenberg. But it’s like they came into the world new, they fall in love with Germany and that was their tragedy. I was talking to Anita Lasker-Wallfisch this morning, quite often when I’m preparing lectures like this. I go around and talk to her because she was brought up exactly in that milieu and she was 14 before her life was completely destroyed by the Nazis. And she was brought up by a family who were part of that German enlightenment. They’d loved German culture, they were of it. So it’s, today of course we find it difficult because we know what happened next. Even Heine who is far more sensitive and far seeing the most, he once said, the two ethical nations, the Jews and the Germans can create a new Jerusalem in Germany. Heine, who of course was he died in 1856, completely rubbished by Wagner as an imitator, the great Heinrich Heine. So let’s talk about Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He’s going to become absolutely central to the circle at Bayreuth after Wagner’s death. Cosima, who was the keeper of the shrine, she adored Wagner. We talked on Tuesday about her rather masochistic personality, her very strange upbringing. The daughter of, the illegitimate daughter of Liszt who was brought up by his mother, very Catholic, Paris, the antisemitism of Paris.

She, in many ways was worse than her husband. And now she is going to follow her master’s dream of Bayreuth. She paid total attention to the operas and this is the man who is going to become her son-in-law. So I’m going to give you his background because he’s terribly important. And what I’m, I think, I suppose what I’ve, my take on all of this is, yes, Wagner was an appalling antisemite. He made antisemitism even more respectable in cultural circles because he was worshipped as a God. Also his paganism, which was beyond good and evil, to quote Nietzsche, he threw away conventional morality along with all the other race theorists because the point where it all comes together is theory of race. And one of the most important figures in that is Houston Stewart Chamberlain. And his background is interesting because both him and Wagner’s daughter-in-law, Winifred, were English. Houston Stewart Chamberlain was born in Hampshire. His father was a rear admiral. His mother came from a naval background. He comes from the lower reaches of the English gentry.

His father died before he was a year old and he was brought up in France by his grandmother. Aged 11 he’s sent to Cheltenham College, which was very much a military college. And he grew up in this atmosphere of Victorian England, you know, God is an Englishman, the so-called age of progress, where England was incredibly wealthy, scientific progress, very much the technological revolution. But he was a dreamer and he’d longed for a world that was beyond the modern ugly cities. He disliked Cheltenham College, he felt very much displaced. He was far more interested in the arts and in the military. And he became very much influenced by conservative romanticism. The reaction to modernity, you see the Jew, particularly in Europe, is the symbol of modernity. It’s a different story in England, we spent a lot of time on this, but in Germany, the Jew is the centre, but in England, he falls in love with the notion of going back to a romantic period which was before the ugly cities, before industry is grinding people, to a world of the laughing and dancing peasantry. You know, it’s a complete phoney picture but Hitler is also going to fall in love with this picture. It’s important. Anyway, he found the city’s dirty, they’re overcrowded, dehumanising society he believed was dominated by a Philistine middle class which had no notion of the arts.

Remember, he’s in Paris, he’s a great reader. He falls in love with the arts. 14, he was a sickly child. He withdraws from Cheltenham College. He feels out of place in Europe. The family are rich. and he travels to various spas around Europe with a German tutor, a man called Otto Kuntze, who instructed him in German and awakened him in a great industry in interest in German history and German culture. Because this, remember, think he’s born in 1855. He goes to Germany after German unification with a German nationalist, a man who begins to imbue in him the notion of Aryan supremacy. And he also, by the way, learned Italian. He was a clever man. He was fascinated by the renaissance. He studied in Geneva. He studied botany, he studied astronomy. He also the physiology of the human body. He was influenced very much by the notion of race theory, which was becoming important and he developed an absolute pathological hatred from a man whom he saw as responsible for all the ills of Britain and that man was Benjamin Disraeli. Benjamin Disraeli, you love him or hate him. I’m sure you all know that I have had a love affair with the dead Benjamin Disraeli ever since I was really a student. But Chamberlain hated him. He hated his cynicism, he hated his opportunism. He didn’t understand the greatness of Disraeli. And this and I think this is really the beginnings of his antisemitism and also he writes a letter where he describes the landlords, Chamberlain describes landlords in Ireland as bloodsucking Jews. Have you any idea how few Jews were in Ireland of this period? And it’s in 1878 that he first hears the music of Wagner. And he says he has almost a religious revelation.

He becomes a total Wagnerite and a Germanophile. And he found the sort of mystical life-affirming force that he’d never found in either British or French culture, or Italian culture. So he falls in love with the music, he believes more and more race theory. And he begins to believe that the supreme group are the Aryans. And he begins to believe in the tussle of the races. His family decide he should earn a living. He goes to Paris as a stockbroker, he’s totally inept. He develops an even greater hatred of capitalism. And of course the antisemites in Paris called the boss, they called it, the Jewish stock exchange, they called it the Jewish synagogue. So, because he develops this terrible anti-capitalism, he sees Jews as capitalists. He immerses himself in all sorts of crazy philosophical writings. He becomes interested in the Volkisch writings of Vienna and of Berlin. You know, these notions of going back to the Volk, the Volka being destroyed by modern capitalism, by bloodsucking. And he said that high art can only really be understood by the pure. He wrote, when in 1888, Frederick the emperor of Germany died, he wrote, “The Jewish liberal is now dead.” Now what had happened was 1888 in Germany is the year of the three emperors.

You have the Kaiser dies age 90, succeeded by his liberal son Frederick, who only lives for a hundred days. The history of Germany would’ve been very different if Frederick had lived. He was married to Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter, Vicky, read a good biography of her, that’s really interesting. And what they had hoped to do was to make Germany into a mirror of England with parliamentary democracy. He was very much influenced by his wife, who had been the favourite child of Prince Albert. So consequently, when he dies, the comment is the Jewish liberal is dead, that is great and of course he is succeeded by Kaiser Wilhelm II, and you all know the rest. Anyway, he meets Cosima Wagner, remember he’s a wealthy young man. He’s involved in all sorts of cultural circles and finally, he meets Cosima in 1888. He never meets Wagner. He meets Cosima five years after Wagner’s death and he’s electrified by her. He falls in love with her but in a very kind of aesthetic, platonic kind of way. And she falls for him again in this platonic way. They both worship at the feet of her dead husband. She says she loves his, remember she’s a great letter writer, his outstanding learning and dignified character and she began to regard him as a surrogate son. And under her influence, he very much develops all his beliefs in the unity of race, art, nation, culture. He becomes . So, she influences him and he also has an admirer of a man called Arthur de Gobineau who had written an interesting book on Aryan masters. Everything is about the hatred of the Jew.

The Aryan, there’s going to be a tussle to the end of time between the Aryan and the Jew and they both cannot survive in this world. The Jew is trying to destroy everything that’s great in the Aryan. The Jew has taken over capitalism, the Jew has taken over communism, the Jew has taken over the press. It’s an absolute sick obsession. What is the reality? The majority of Jews in Eastern Europe at that period are dirt poor. They’re the majority. They are escaping, many of them are escaping the pogroms and coming either to, mainly to America, Britain, and to South Africa and Canada or South America or Palestine. They’re getting out because of the poverty and the ravagement of the pogroms. That’s the reality. What is true though, in France, in Britain, in Germany, in America, there is a small number of incredibly talented Jewish entrepreneurs who are forging a new modern world. There’s a disproportionate number of Jews in the new emerging sciences. There’s a disproportionate number of Jews in the press. The two most important press houses in Germany, the Ullstein and the Mosse were owned by Jewish families but so what? The point is about these antisemites, they see it as blood. It doesn’t matter if you convert to Christianity, these are the ideas of blood and race and with characters like Cosima who takes Wagner’s ideas to the nth degree, unity of race, let me repeat, the unity of race, art, nation, and culture.

That is what is in, that is what is necessary and the enemy of the Aryan is the Jew. And in 1908, he’s already married, he’s divorced, and he makes his second marriage to Eva, the daughter of Cosima, Liszt’s granddaughter, Wagner’s daughter. So not only is he imbued as part of the circle, he marries into the circle. He becomes a very important part of Bayreuth and he believed the promotion of Wagner and Wagner’s great art would, if you like, cure modern society of its ills. You need to go back to the spirituality of the music of Wagner which is beyond good and evil. It is pagan. Now and of course, who are the evil ones who have caused industrialization, materialism, urbanisation? It is the Jew. So the whole of the circle is in Bayreuth is really directed into antisemitism. And this is him now. “The final aim of the Jew is to create a situation. There would be in Europe, only a single people of pure race, the Jew. All the rest would be a herd of pseudo-Hebrew mesitos, a people beyond all doubt degenerate physically, mentally, and morally.” And you see what he goes on to say is, Jews are into marrying because Jewish blood is pure, they are and it’s strong. And that’s how they can raise, they can raise their blood and lower the blood of the Aryan peoples. And he goes on to say, the Jews, you see, this is where it becomes completely laughable. He says, “The Jews actually founded Catholicism, which preached a Judaized Christianity.” It’s got nothing to do with the Aryan Christ. It Judaizes Jesus. “Democracy was a failed Jewish invention.

Socialism is a cunning strategy to divert attention from Jewish financiers.” He even goes as far as to say that Jews were behind Chinese civilization. I mean, he is deeply sick, but he’s obsessed. And he said, what you have, let me repeat this because this is important and you all know where it’s going to lead. “The world is linked into this war between the Jew and the Aryan.” “And the more,” he says, he talks about the assimilated intermarrying Jews, the converted Jews, “The more a Jew takes on the habits and thoughts of his Gentile compatriots, the more he was to be feared.” And what he creates, of course, is a book called “The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century.” And it sold well. By 1930 it had sold a quarter of a million characters, quarter of a million copies. It made him a very celebrated character in Germany. Its success made him a huge celebrity. He’s already part of the Bayreuth Circle. The book, he sent the book to Kaiser Wilhelm. Kaiser Wilhelm wrote, “God has sent you to me and to Germany.” Kaiser Wilhelm himself was a notorious antisemite. If you want to read up on that, it’s John Rohl’s brilliant book, “The Kaiser and His Court.” A German Jewish journalist called Moritz Goldstein, he said, “His book has made me a Zionist.” And he says, “Even the best spirits, clever and truth loving men who, however, as soon as they speak of the Jews, they fall into a blind, almost rabid hatred.” What he’s saying is, what Moritz Goldstein is saying, and this is before the First World War that antisemitism was such, particularly after the war, after the stock market crash of 1873, that is so popular, it’s so much part of the cultured classes in Germany that it’s even reasonable people will fall for it. Now let’s be careful here because the question is then why on earth then did the Jews put up with it? Why did they still fall in love with Germany?

Because there’d been no physical attacks since the Hep-Hep riots of 1819. And believe it or not, the 19th century was still the best century. They had experience since the dispersion in Europe. I’m not talking about the world of the Ottoman Empire here but if you’re looking at the German lands, this is the best century they ever experienced. They’ve fallen in love with Germany and surely in the end, the Germans will realise how much we’ve given to Germany. And there were liberals. Never forget that, there was liberal opinion in Germany. If intermarriage is running at 45%, that means there are families that they can marry into. So we’ve got to be careful. The problem is we know what happened next. So consequently it is going to colour us. So my contention is yes, Wagner was an evil antisemite. Yes, he was a great artist but it’s the culture around Bayreuth, which is further developed by Cosima and now by Houston Stewart Chamberlain that becomes, it becomes very, very dangerous. And Chamberlain and Cosima, remember they mixing the highest echelons of German society. How did Chamberlain get to the Kaiser? Through Philipp von Eulenburg who was his closest friend and he was actually a homosexual. And was he and the Kaiser lovers, who knows, but that’s another interesting story. And Chamberlain, this is what the Kaiser wrote back to Chamberlain. Not only that, “May you save our German vault for God has sent you as our helper.” And Chamberlain wrote back, “You must create a Germany that will rule the world.” Can you imagine a man who the Kaiser admires telling him to try and rule the world? Houston Stewart Chamberlain, he even supported the British, he supported the Africanas against the Boer War.

You know how he described it? “It’s the war of Anglo-Jewish aggression against German Africanas.” Cosima talking about the Boer War, “The extermination of one of the most excellent Germanic races is so horrible.” He goes for a while to live in Vienna. He’s the centre of the conservative Wagner Rights in Vienna. He has very close friendships with the upper echelons of Viennese society. And next term, when we look at the Habsburg Empire, I’m going to spend the, or myself and my colleagues, we’re going to spend a lot of time on Vienna because it’s absolutely fascinating. It could have gone anyway, Vienna. You know, if somebody gave you a time machine and said, “Where, if you can only go back for a day to five different stops from in the last 2,000 years as a Jew, what would you choose?” And frankly, one of them for me would be Vienna. And I’d have to choose, I think probably to go to one of Freud’s meetings in Vienna. I mean, it’s an interesting game for you to play over the holidays because I have a hunch many of us are going to be shut up again. But it’s an interesting game to play with your families. If you could only go back to five spots, where would you go back to? I’d also want to go back to 1948 when Ben-Gurion proclaimed the state, but that’s another story. Let’s go back. It’s “The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century” I should also mention was actually commissioned by a Munich Publica, a man called Hugo Brookman who was a leading Volkisch activist because already, and I’ll be talking about this next term, you have extraordinary characters in Vienna called Guido von List, Liebenfels with the most crazy ideas of Aryan nationalism and national soul. And he was later the publisher of “Mein Kampf.”

Anyway, so with the foundations of the 19, “The Foundations of The Nineteenth Century,” I’m going to use terms that some of you will find objectionable but I’m using the terms that Chamberlain used. “The looming war is the war of the Aryan and the Aryan must fight the Jew who controls both the Black and the Chinese yellow peril.” So you see where he’s coming from. The Jew is the master race, the only race capable of destroying the Aryan and he is manipulating the Black who he controls to subvert society. The only way we can survive is that we destroy the Jew. The Jewish race is the inverse of the Aryan. “All wars,” he says. This is his book that sells a quarter of a million copies. “All wars are financed by Jews. Jews aim to put their foot upon the neck of all the nations of the world and be possessors of the whole world.” Now, he of course, when World War I happens, he is a fervent German nationalist. He said that no Jew could ever fight for Germany. He publishes various text against England, the country of his birth. He wants to destroy the English and French parliamentary system of governments. He said, “The power of Germany must be thought out by a few and carried out by iron in consequence.” He wants a dictatorship. That’s what he believes in. And he said that no Jews are fighting in the army. Of course, that was completely untrue but it led to all… He and others were really pushing this and it led to questions in the German parliament in the First World War. And it was very, very difficult. In fact, 100,000 Jews did fight for Germany in the First World War. Now, he is actually paralysed but he becomes a keen supporter of Adolf Hitler.

He sees Hitler as Germany’s saviour and when Hitler read “The Foundations of The Nineteenth Century,” they very much influenced him as they also influenced Joseph Goebbels. And in 1923, when Hitler came to Bayreuth he’s in a wheelchair but he’s back in Bayreuth. After 1907, Cosima wasn’t well and the platform passes, the baton passes to her son who has married an English woman called Winifred, a bit more about her in a minute. And he met Hitler in Bayreuth and for the Volkisch German day that was held at Bayreuth. And he wrote, this is what he wrote. Most respected, a letter to Hitler and “Dear Hitler. It’s hardly surprising that a man like that can give peace to a poor, suffering spirit, especially when he is dedicated to the service of the Fatherland. My faith in German then has not wavered though my hopes were at a low end. With one stroke, you have transformed the state of my soul.” This is after the defeat in the First World War. “That Germany in her hour of need brings forth a Hitler, that is proof of her vitality. May God protect you.” And of course, this letter caused a huge media sensation because Hitler was just a member of a tiny, little party. And of course, Houston Stewart Chamberlain called all Germans to join Hitler’s Putsch in 1923. He joined the party. And when he died in 1927, his funeral was attended by Hitler. And the last person I’m going to mention is of course, Winifred. Now can we come onto her picture, please? She married Siegfried when, if you could run onto Winifred, yes, there’s Winifred. She ran the Bayreuth Festival after her husband’s death in 1930, right up until the end of World War II. She was a very strange character. She was born in Hastings. She lost both parents before she was two years old and she was adopted by a distant German cousin of her mother. His husband, the cousin’s husband had been a friend of Wagner’s and Cosima. And they became guests at Bayreuth.

And from 1907, as I said, Bayreuth is now run by Siegfried. Siegfried was bisexual. Everyone was worried about him. He needed to produce heirs so he is married off to Winifred, who’s 17 years his junior, sorry, much younger than that. Sorry. She was 17, he was 45. They hoped, quote unquote, I don’t want any comments on this, I’m quoting. “They would cure his tendencies, avoid scandal, and produce an heir.” In fact, they did produce four children and after his death, she takes over the mantle. Now, she meets Adolf Hitler in 1923 when he came to Bayreuth and during the prison sentence after the Beer Hall Putsch, she sends him food parcels and of course I told you on Tuesday, she provided the paper on which he probably wrote “Mein Kampf.” And they had a very, very close relationship. There were even rumours after Siegfried’s death of a potential marriage. Hitler often visited the Wagner house in Bayreuth. It was his favourite retreat. And after 1933, he gave financial assistance to the festival. And according to the biographer, Brigitte Hamann, she was very much, she did intercede with Hitler. After Hitler came to power, she did intercede with him to save friends, a friend, a Jewish friend who was daughter, was married to Thomas Mann.

On one level, she adores Hitler, but she does intercede to save Jews. And according to her grandson, Gottfried, who I mentioned that I actually met, she never recanted our blessed Adolf. Now she did correspond with him for two decades. The letters have never been released by the family. She did believe passionately in his ideas on what happens after the war. A denazification court did ban her from Bayreuth but there were 50 letters from Jews who said that she had actually saved them during the war. So as a result of that, she was given 450 days of hard labour and lost half her property. But by the 1950s, she was again the political hostess, her son who, her grandson who very much disavowed the family, he said, “My grandmother, again, slowly blossomed as the first lady of right wing groups and received political friends such as Emmy Goring, she never recanted her father’s views. Ilse Hess. Hess of course had escaped to Britain, there’s a hell of a story in that because I really believe he went with a blessing of Hitler. Gerdy Troost, Troost was Hitler’s architect before Speer. Oswald Mosley came to visit her many times. The fascist movie director Karl Ritter, the racist author and former Senator Ziegler, who was one of the leading cultural figures under the Nazis. She held a right wing court in the '50s. In 1975 in a television interview, "To have known Hitler was experience I would not have missed.” She was asked about David Irving, David Irving who crossed the Rubicon. She said, “I will still have welcomed him.” She actually died at Uberlingen. Uberlingen is on Lake Constance. It’s funnily enough a retreat, it’s a medical retreat where I know a lot of German Austrian Jews living in England used to go for their health. She died there in 1950.

She’s buried in Bayreuth. So, to sum up and I hope I haven’t rushed too much to the end, but to sum it up, and of course there are many books on different characters that I brought up here, my contention is this. Wagner was an evil antisemite but his music to many people is glorious. I would suggest to you, he died in 1883, his music had a huge influence on Hitler. But it’s actually characters, like Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who are more important in the development of race theory because Hitler is going to swallow all of this, and it’s all going to appear in “Mein Kampf” as is the protocols of the elders of Zion. So I think I’m going to, what I’m going to say, my final analysis is that yes, Wagner is one of the most ghastly antisemites in modern history. Is he responsible for the show at No? Its remote causation? Should his music be played in Israel, that I leave to others of you to decide. It’s complicated, but as I said to you, it was not played in the death camps. I got that authoritatively from somebody who was in the orchestra. So, I’m going to leave it there. I don’t want the storm clouds to descend on me and let me also say I only brought Nietzsche in because I wanted to show you, even though his reputation was taken on by antisemites, and he himself was not antisemitic.

It was his sister and his sister’s husband. He’s a very complicated, difficult philosopher to understand and I’m going to repeat, I hope a friend of mine is listening because he’s actually a professor of Nietzsche and philosophy, and maybe this will give him the impetus to give us the lecture we need. So let’s see how the questions are going.

Q&A and Comments:

• Trudy, I just want to jump in and say that there was this big debate today, funnily enough, when I was in the gym and they were talking about, they were actually talking exactly that, you know, if you don’t, if someone is a big, is an antisemite, should one listen to the music or not? And you know, somebody brought up the point, when you, you know the expression, he was so awful, I can’t look at him.

• Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• And I realised he was so awful but now that he is, I really can’t look at him. So, you know, just to go back to your point.

• Okay, Wendy, your passion is art. Your passion is art.

• One of the them.

• [Trudy] One of your great passions is art.

• Many passions.

• About Degas.

• Yes, exactly. Oh, there were many.

• How do you feel about-

• What about Vlaminck?

• Yeah, you see, this is the problem we have.

• Yeah.

• You know, are we going… It’s complicated. Look, we can’t in any way accuse Degas as we would accuse Wagner, but I still think it’s terribly complicated, Wendy I don’t know the answer to it. I told you we ran a course at LJCC run by Margaret Brierley, brilliantly run by Margaret Brierley, who believes that some of the characters in the opera are antisemitic. And a lot of people who attended feel too guilty to go to listen to Margaret at the opera house but they wanted to listen to him in what they thought was a safe environment. It’s complicated, isn’t it?

• Complicated.

• Let’s see. Oh, nice, people being nice. Oh, sorry. Wendy, you shouldn’t have been brought. It was, bless you. Tanya was shortlisted for political writer of the year. She didn’t get it but she was shortlisted and that’s what Wendy was mentioning, yeah. Thank you. Oh, all of you are so nice.

This is Valerie. “I feel there are great many wonderful composers, many of them German, but Wagner has harmed the Jews by his vicious antisemitism. So I would feel I would rather not listen to his music. There is so much other music I can enjoy. There might privately have been or antisemitic, but their views are not publicised.” Well, it’s interesting, you know?

Oh, this is Ken. Ken, I’m going to out you. Ken is a professor of philosophy at Birkbeck with specialty in Nietzsche. Well, he did write some nice things after he went insane. “I’m EGM having Bismarck shock on all the antisemites and I’m so tired. After all, I am every name in history.” You’re going to have to give us a lecture, Ken.

Yes, Arlene, I read that Nietzsche was not antisemitic. His sister was very antisemitic. Inherited in Nietzsche’s work, yes. Ken is replying. “Complicated issue. Antisemitic in the modern sense of having prejudice against Jews but not in the sense of the 19th century antisemitic political nationalism, Wilhelm and Houston Stewart Chamberlain and others. He deliberately repudiated this nationalist antisemites. On the other hand, he screwed with his German audience by telling them their Christian morality, they were Jews, indeed the invention of the Jews. This is known as the rhetoric of also practised by Marx and Wagner.” Thanks, Ken. You are so concise. Thank you so much.

Could we be sent the very lengthy Nietzsche quote. Oi. That is our story. Nietzsche sees us as we are now. Oi. Typo in Ludwig’s dates. Thank you. Please, Trudy, tell us the number of Tristan recordings Patrick had. Asha, I think it’s 38 copies of Tristan and his older. Patrick is dealing with “Lohengrin” on that’s why Wendy decided it was important that I’d start talking about Wagner. But we must, if Patrick is prepared to do it, it would be a, there’s a couple of really interesting lectures on that from the musical point of view as well.

Q: Oh, this is from Valerie. “Firing your last lecture I watched you will not play Wagner recommended by one of audiences on YouTube and I recommend it. Is it acceptable to enjoy play Wagner if he was so antisemitic?”

A: Valerie, I really believe this is something everyone should make up for themselves. I’m going to tell you something personal. I went. I first heard Wagner in Munich actually. We took a group there and I was with Robert Wistrich’s mother. Now she’d had to flee the Nazis and I think, I don’t have to say anymore about that family. I mean they are totally, totally trustworthy. And she said, you are coming with me to hear Wagner and it was the “Flying Dutchman.” And it was one of the most bizarre experiences of my life because the set designer, the ship in the exodus was flashed over the screen and they all came out in the garb of concentration camps, inmates. It was absolutely horrific. And I did get transported by the music and she turned around to me at the end. She was phenomenal. If her son was a genius, she was twice that. She said, “See, you have given in to the emotion. I knew you would, I wanted you to experience it.” And the other time I went to a Wagner opera was with a Holocaust survivor who enjoyed listening to Wagner because as she said, “I can.” And she was a very close friend of Patrick’s. So it’s complicated.

Valerie, “Generally Jews love the country, the culture of the country they live in. As a British Jew, I love English culture.” Yes. Yes, of course. And also we are such chameleons. I know that Woody Allen is not fashionable anymore but I really advise you to see a film of his called “Zelig.” It’s about how Jews so much want to be part of cultures they fall in love with that they absorb themselves into them.

This is from David. “Thank you for reading Nietzsche. From what you read, Nietzsche seems to understand Jews as well as we do. It is ironic yet typical that people hate us, caught the non-critical writings of people who seem to understand it.”

Yes. Valerie. “I think Disraeli was a very fascinating man. I’ve read all his books. When he was prime minister, he brought in many laws to help the poor. It would be nice if you do a session.” Valerie I have many times. Remember, we’ve been running a long time. If Wendy will allow it and if the rest of you can bear it, I will give lectures on Disraeli at the drop of a hat. In history, my two great loves are Disraeli and Heine. Thank you, Gita.

• [Wendy] Trudy, of course I will allow it. You say the word whenever you want to.

• I must tell you, Wendy, when I start talking about Disraeli, the kids go glare, they go bleary-eyed. They say-

• I know.

• This is Romy. “Thank you, Trudy. Do you think a lot of modern artists and writers in fact hated and spared of modernity? And for some artists, they blame this on the Jews. Quite ironic that the Jews were major modern art dealers.” Yes. You see, it’s not so much a lot of modern art. I think the academies, they felt the Jews were all about modernity. The romantics wanted to go back. They didn’t like modern art. That’s the point. I mean, Wendy knows more about this than I do. But what is fascinating is most of the dealers in Germany after the First World War, in fact, most of the dealers in Europe were of Jewish birth. That’s another issue. The Jews are about modern art, modern music and these romantics and many of whom toppled into racism, they saw the Jews as the arbiters of a modern world they hated.

• But don’t forget, Trudy, that modern art then is not what modern art is now.

• Oh, no, agreed. No.

• So, you know, it’s just, it’s as you know, it’s a change. Anything that’s new.

• Yes, new. And at that stage-

• Challenge the new.

• New is dangerous to many people, isn’t it?

• Forward-thinking and entrepreneurial, the creators.

• And therefore, it upsets the existing order so it’s a bit dangerous.

Teddy, “Why not have Patrick give us an evening with selected examples of Wagner?” And Elia said, ug. So I’m leaving that entirely to you.

Ken, “The redemption of the human race, namely from the Lords, is well underway. Everything is Jewifying or Christifying or mobifiying as we watch. What do the words matter? The progress of this poisoning through the entire body of humanity appears unstoppable.” Yeah. We are going for, to put it in a very much more prosaic terms, we are not going through a good patch, are we? Oh my God. That’s from Nietzsche’s “Genealogy of Morality.” I thought you would say, you know, that could just as easily be about today.

Antisemitism is again the most popular attitude. Judians beware, I must say though, Michael, I think every minority is having a bad time at the moment. Look, we have all the, think about it. You’ve got economic, social, and political unrest. You’ve got a pandemic. And what we haven’t learned to cure, that’s why look at that quote of yours, Ken. We always have to find someone to blame. What hurts me is that many of the other so-called victim groups are blaming us. They don’t see us as a victim group.

Peter, “I was of the opinion that antisemitism was mainly found in Bavaria and Prussia was more welcoming to the Jews. After today’s lecture I question whether this was true.” Look, let’s put it this way. The Nazis hated Berlin. Munich was their city. So it’s a very long, complicated answer to a question, Peter. I think on balance, Bavaria was very much the cradle of Nazis and Bayreuth remember, Munich. I mean, so I’ve travelled a lot in that world and I still find Munich almost atavistic. I remember we went to, I went with some friends to the ballet in Munich and they said to me, “Do something gentle. Go shopping.” So I went to a department store. This is about 10 years ago. About a third of the costumes were Bavarian national costume. And what I found fascinating, about a third of the audience at the opera were wearing Bavarian national costume.

Abigail, “I read "Why Mahler?” by Norman Lebrecht and it also a very close reading about antisemitism in the musical world of Vienna.“ You’ll be pleased to know that I spoke to Norman, who at the moment is writing a biography on Beethoven, and he’s agreed to do another presentation for us next year. James didn’t like the book.

Oh, Gita says, "But we have one, we can enjoy his music. Plus we have the state of Israel.” What was the blood relationship between Frederick and Kaiser Wilhelm? Kaiser Wilhelm I was the father, Frederick the son Wilhelm, Wilhelm II was his son. 1888 is known as the year of the three emperors. And I really, there’s some very good biographies of the Empress Vicky, who was married to Frederick, and as I said, the daughter of Queen Victoria. You know, the ifs and buts of history. That’s one of the big ones. If Frederick had taken the throne and lived, he only lived a hundred days, he had throat cancer, would Germany have been different? He actually went to the synagogue as a protest against the antisemitic atmosphere in Berlin. He and his wife were at the centre of liberalism. The problem was that the Kaiser Wilhelm I was very reactionary and the grandson, Kaiser Wilhelm I’s grandson, Wilhelm II, Frederick’s son, was also reactionary.

Q: Are you saying two of the greatest influence on antisemitism in Germany were British?

A: Afraid so.

Wait a minute, the fallacy of Marx thought and the… I don’t understand what you’re saying, Abigail. The fallacy of Marx thought in the intelligence of the 19, the current academic love of BDS and the Palestinian course in our time. I don’t understand what that means. I can’t imagine Robert Wistrich saying that. Robert Wistrich wrote a lot on the academic boycott but I don’t think a man of his intellect, Robert, was not political. People always make that mistake about Robert Wistrich. He was beyond politics. He was a very in, he was my closest friend. He was a very, very unusual person. And he was neither right wing nor left wing. His father was a communist until he was imprisoned by Stalin, you know?

Is this D. Goodman, Dennis I think. “Maybe South African Judge Chris Nicholson has written a wonderfully research, easy to read book called "Richard and Adolf.” Did Richard Wagner incite Hitler to commit the Holocaust?“ You see, that is such a fascinating notion. Not Wagner. To what extent was his music important? I suppose that’s the point, isn’t it?

How important was? You know, the throwaway line of Hitler’s to understand national socialism, you should listen to Wagner. Now Patrick will argue that in fact, Hitler had much more pedestrian tastes. He loved "The Merry Widow” and in fact, a lot of the inner circle did not appreciate Wagner’s music. It’s complicated. As I said, when we staged that mock trial all those years ago, and it was done in a very formal way with a judge, a prosecutor, and a defender, they were all, that’s what they did for a living. And they worked so hard on it and we had academic experts. They, in the end they decided it was remote causation. I can’t answer that question.

Q: Ken’s, “Do you think Hitler’s racism owes more to Houston Stewart Chamberlain or Madison Grant? Hitler called the latter’s passing of the great racist bible in a letter to Grant.”

A: The point is, I think there are about 10 books that Hitler imbibed, Ken. I think look, what do you think about, for example, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?” What do you think about List and Liebenfels? I mean, I think “Mein Kampf” is a hotchpotch. Look, I don’t think it was any one person. I think there’s a lot of characters that fed into the diseased personality of Adolf Hitler. I mean, I think it was List who talked not Franz Liszt, List was a racist theorist in Vienna. He talked about the coming of the great man who will save the world, the fuhrer. And he said, what the fuhrer says is right. And that later of course became the fuhrer principle. Guido List. Exactly. That became the fuhrer principle, didn’t it?

Q: Now Ken, important question. Does Wagner’s antisemitism reflect in his operas?

A: Now, this is the question and they will argue that you can read half a dozen books that say one, half a dozen books that say the other. I do not know enough about the music to actually, I’m not going to pronounce on that. I know a lot about biography. I know a lot about German history, but I do not know enough about the music. I don’t even know that Patrick will pronounce on it because we try not to be… You know, if there’s such a thing as objectivity, a good historian will attempt to be objective. There is no such thing because we come through our own prisons. But I would not answer that. I would not, I’m not equipped to answer that question. If at some stage there are people who want to stage that debate on Lockdown, I’m sure that Wendy and I would welcome it. But I can’t be that person.

Ken says he can’t type, nor can I. Oh, Ken’s agree. Thank you. I’ve put you on the spot. Our professor from Birkbeck will give the Nietzsche lecture. Thank you. Next term. Thank you.

This is Abigail. “I once had tickets to watch one of Wagner’s operas at The Met on film with a dear friend who asked me to get her tickets. I had to leave in the middle because I couldn’t tolerate the morality of the story,” or are you saying the immorality of the story. If you didn’t know about Wagner’s antisemitism and you didn’t know about his connection with Nazism, could you have enjoyed the opera? You know, I think the most famous piece of music in the Western world, the most popular is still “Carmina Burana.” It was actually on BBC Four today. Ironically, the Chinese Orchestra of Shanghai was playing it. Now Carl Orff joined the Nazi party. Can we not listen to “Carmina Burana?” And what about Bruckner? He’s problematic. So what are we saying? It’s a big one this. Just as Wendy brought it up with art. Are you going to stop looking at some of the great artists because they hated Jews? And what, you know, it’s this whole business with statues on another level, isn’t it? I mean, if you think about it, I totally understand the motivation of people who do not want to see statues to people who were responsible for the most appalling crimes. But where is the line drawn? You know, as I said with a smile on my face, the statue outside parliament is the statue of Richard I. He wasn’t responsible for the biggest pogrom in Britain, in British history was in his reign. Am I going to become a militant and say I want that taken down? No, because I’m a Jew who does irony. I kind of smile. You know, my Christmas present, if I may call it that, is going to be, I’m going to do a session on Mel Brooks because we have to laugh. The only way we can cope with it is really to laugh at it. That’s always been the Jewish way.

Oh, this is from Rose. She liked it but had a hard time listening because it turns my stomach. Rabbi Sacks often quotes Nietzsche. Well, Rabbi Sacks studied philosophy remember.

Anita, “It really isn’t that complicated. Wagner was a horrible antisemite and promulgated hatred of the Jews. Each one of us may decide whether to listen to his music is something our conscience allows us to do.” That’s very sensible.

Oh, that’s from Sheila. I’m getting very, oh goodness Sheila, you didn’t have to thank me from sunny Boca Raton. Thank you very much. But she sends greetings from sunny Boca Raton, which I believe means mouth of the rat. Oh, I don’t know. You can’t send me nice greetings when I’m in almost about to be locked down London.

Estelle, “Cosima’s mother, Marie, came from a Jewish family who converted to Catholicism. She was brought up as a Catholic. Yeah. Makes one wonder. By the way, Hitler’s favourite composer was actually Carl Orff. Not sure about that. Interesting faction but worth reading "Winnie and Wolf.” I’m not sure Martin, because Patrick with… Is Patrick giving me a tanning sheet but he said he loved, Hitler loved “The Merry Widow.” I don’t know.

Diane says, “Babies would like a lecture on Disraeli.”

Diane, “So much of the content of your lectures is a play book of much that is happening today in America.” Look, what is happening is polarisation, but we can’t predict the future by looking at the past. Never ever think that. There are lots of conditions that… There are lots of conditions that had happened today in the particular, for example, the state of Israel that didn’t exist at this period, which has completely altered many things for the Jewish people. And also just because we’re going through a dark time doesn’t mean we’re going to have a horrific conclusion. You have to go on, you have to travel optimistically. I really believe this. For the sake of our children and our grandchildren, we have to travel optimistically. But I think we also have to educate. And don’t get me onto my hobby horse about how many clever people, clever Jewish people don’t know their own history and therefore are not armed to deal with antisemitism. I’m not saying we can cure it, but we can certainly cure. I think we can do a lot to help our own young people who are bewildered when they’re confronted by antisemitism because they don’t really know where it comes from. Look, we’re still an incredibly well-educated people. Don’t our kids deserve better? Sorry, I’m pretty cheap, I really believe that.

This is from Frieda. Porcelain loved Wagner. Nietzsche broke his relations with Wagner because of Wagner’s antisemitism. Nearly all the Impressionists were antisemites. Also, Suzanne was an antisemite. Manny wasn’t. Frieda, it’s so good to hear from you.

Q: Can I repeat the book on “German Jewry?”

A: Arlene has done it for me. I love us, our group. “The Pity of It All” by Igdal Elon. It’s brilliant. You know, once in a while a history book comes out that is so wonderful that you dreamt that you could have written it and I couldn’t. Oh my God, that’s talent. That was real talent. And you know what I also like about it? It’s beautifully written. Nice people are saying nice things.

“The Jews of the,” this is from Abigail, “The Jews of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire before World War I were very positive. Hasidic rabbis attended the funeral of the Kaiser.” Abigail, you’ve got three months soon on the Habsburg Empire all the way through to the present. That’s what the decision we’ve made. So there’s going to be a lot to all of us.

This is from Cynthia. “My good friend Claire McHugh wrote a novel that was published last year about Princess Vicky called "The Most English Princess” available on paperback on Amazon. Thank you, Cynthia. Hilary, “Did eugenic start in Britain with Francis Galton?” Look, there were many centres of eugenics, if I remember. Sweden, Britain, America. I’m not sure. I’m not sure where they started. I’m sure someone online will know.

Oh dear, this is Frieda. Joseph Beuys was a member of the Nazi party, a guru of contemporary art. You see. This is a similar problem for Rock France. Pink Floyd was a great band but how do we deal with Roger Waters’ antisemitism? Yeah.

Q: This is from Lorna. “Thank you, Trudy. On a similar note, should we visit countries whose policies or regimes we don’t care for?”

A: You’re going to find there aren’t that many places you’re going to be able to go to soon. Yeah.

Sarah, yes, “The Pity of It All.” Mel Brooks has just published his autobiography. Yes. Right. Now, Mel Brooks, I’ve read his autobiography you’ll be pleased to know because Tanya’s reviewed it. It’s coming out. Her review’s coming out in The Spectator Christmas edition. She said it was a great read but then my family love Mel Brooks. J

udi’s getting online and I know why she’s getting online. I haven’t even read it yet because we’ve got a great lecture at 7:00 with Helen Fry. So you need time to have a cup of tea because you mustn’t miss Helen. She’s talking and what’s the actual to title tonight, Judi?

• [Judi] “Behind Enemy Lines.”

• Yes.

• “Austrian Jewish Refugees and the SOE.”

• Yeah, this is such an important lecture and Helen is incredibly, is an incredibly brilliant lecturer. Judi, I’ve gone on too long. I’m sorry. So, I’ll be listening online. Lots of love to all of you and thanks a lot.

• Thank you, Trudy.

• That was a difficult one to get through. Thanks and Judi, I’m sorry I’m mucked around with the slides as usual.

• [Judi] That’s okay. Thank you everybody and we’ll see everybody at 7:00 for Helen Fry. Take care.

• Good bless.

• Bye-bye

• Bye.