Wagner: Race and Revolution

Rating:
Summary: Some okay stuff, some silly stuff; unreliable
Review: As I see it Rose puts four main arguments. 1 German antisemitism in the 19th century is substantially different from other European strands of antisemitism. I'm not qualified to comment on that, except that Rose doesn't bring out much evidence.

2 German political culture of the 19th century is inherently and ineluctably antisemitic. I'd accept "largely" antisemitic; but Rose wants to make an essentialist case, that you couldn't be a 19th century German radical without being antisemitic, and he fails to support that. Instead we get rhetoric, some of it as heated as Wagner's own.

3 Wagner was always antisemitic, even before 1850, when antisemitic references started to appear in his letters and articles. There it's safe to say that the evidence disproves Rose's case; see, for example, Jacob Katz's "Wagner: The Dark Side of Genius", a book which condemns Wagner's antisemitism on the basis of better research and less tenditiousness. Not only does Rose not actually make his case here, but he couldn't.

4 There is coded antisemitism in Wagner's operas. Here Rose abandons all pretence to academic standards and writes some very silly things. For example he argues that "Die Walku:re" is antisemitic because it depicts incest and adultery sympathetically; but adultery is against the Ten Commandments, and the Ten Commandments is a Jewish document. Wagner's, and "Die Walku:re"'s rejection of the 10 Commandments is therefore antisemitic. Where this leaves Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, and every other opera librettist, poet and dramatist in human history is not clear. By reasoning like this they must all be antisemites. In "Der Fliegende Hollander", Rose argues, Senta's entire village is an antisemitic depiction, because they value money over other values; therefore they must be meant as Jewish. When someone starts looking for antisemitic depictions, and comes up with the idea of a Jewish fishing village in the middle of the Norwegian fiords... when arguments like that are seriously put forward, we know two things. First, that the writer has lost the plot. Second, that the people who should have read the book before publication and got rid of embarrassing silliness like that, weren't doing their job.

I don't know much about the history of 19th century antisemitism in Europe; but Rose's material on Wagner is so hopelessly unreliable and ill-thought-out that it calls into question the reliability of his other material.

There's another comment on this book, apparently written by a believing Marxist, that claims that Wagner made a mistake in making his gods and Nibelungs, in the "Ring", morally equivalent. No, that wasn't a mistake; that was Wagner's _point_. Both the Nibelungs and the gods are involved in a struggle between the values of love and the desire for power. Both the gods and Nibelungs choose power, not love. Wagner was on the side of love, and that is why he makes both sides fall.

Even though Wagner was a flawed human being (but a human being, not a monster; he had a kind and considerate side as well as a selfish and manipulative side), the "Ring" is one of the greatest works of art ever created. And its message is pacifist, pro-love and anti-power, and (ironically, given Wagner's own racism) anti-racist, in showing the moral equivalence of all the different struggling peoples in the "Ring".

The writer of the other comment is right to say that Wagner was a shallow and inconsistent political thinker. But that means that not all of his ideas are bad. His antisemitism shames Wagner's memory as much as the antisemitism of Marx, Bakunin, Proudhon, Schubert, JS Bach, Schumann, Chopin, Mussorgsky, Dostoevsky, TS Eliot and so on and so on, shames theirs. But Wagner's defence of love over power, in the "Ring", strikes me as politically, as well as artistically, not without merit.

Rose makes a mistake in reading antisemitism into works that don't contain it, and another mistake in not recognising that Wagner's works have some moral merit which should not be thrown away.

Laon

Rating:
Summary: Some okay stuff, some silly stuff; unreliable
Review: As I see it Rose puts four main arguments. 1 German antisemitism in the 19th century is substantially different from other European strands of antisemitism. I'm not qualified to comment on that, except that Rose doesn't bring out much evidence.

2 German political culture of the 19th century is inherently and ineluctably antisemitic. I'd accept "largely" antisemitic; but Rose wants to make an essentialist case, that you couldn't be a 19th century German radical without being antisemitic, and he fails to support that. Instead we get rhetoric, some of it as heated as Wagner's own.

3 Wagner was always antisemitic, even before 1850, when antisemitic references started to appear in his letters and articles. There it's safe to say that the evidence disproves Rose's case; see, for example, Jacob Katz's "Wagner: The Dark Side of Genius", a book which condemns Wagner's antisemitism on the basis of better research and less tenditiousness. Not only does Rose not actually make his case here, but he couldn't.

4 There is coded antisemitism in Wagner's operas. Here Rose abandons all pretence to academic standards and writes some very silly things. For example he argues that "Die Walku:re" is antisemitic because it depicts incest and adultery sympathetically; but adultery is against the Ten Commandments, and the Ten Commandments is a Jewish document. Wagner's, and "Die Walku:re"'s rejection of the 10 Commandments is therefore antisemitic. Where this leaves Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, and every other opera librettist, poet and dramatist in human history is not clear. By reasoning like this they must all be antisemites. In "Der Fliegende Hollander", Rose argues, Senta's entire village is an antisemitic depiction, because they value money over other values; therefore they must be meant as Jewish. When someone starts looking for antisemitic depictions, and comes up with the idea of a Jewish fishing village in the middle of the Norwegian fiords... when arguments like that are seriously put forward, we know two things. First, that the writer has lost the plot. Second, that the people who should have read the book before publication and got rid of embarrassing silliness like that, weren't doing their job.

I don't know much about the history of 19th century antisemitism in Europe; but Rose's material on Wagner is so hopelessly unreliable and ill-thought-out that it calls into question the reliability of his other material.

There's another comment on this book, apparently written by a believing Marxist, that claims that Wagner made a mistake in making his gods and Nibelungs, in the "Ring", morally equivalent. No, that wasn't a mistake; that was Wagner's _point_. Both the Nibelungs and the gods are involved in a struggle between the values of love and the desire for power. Both the gods and Nibelungs choose power, not love. Wagner was on the side of love, and that is why he makes both sides fall.

Even though Wagner was a flawed human being (but a human being, not a monster; he had a kind and considerate side as well as a selfish and manipulative side), the "Ring" is one of the greatest works of art ever created. And its message is pacifist, pro-love and anti-power, and (ironically, given Wagner's own racism) anti-racist, in showing the moral equivalence of all the different struggling peoples in the "Ring".

The writer of the other comment is right to say that Wagner was a shallow and inconsistent political thinker. But that means that not all of his ideas are bad. His antisemitism shames Wagner's memory as much as the antisemitism of Marx, Bakunin, Proudhon, Schubert, JS Bach, Schumann, Chopin, Mussorgsky, Dostoevsky, TS Eliot and so on and so on, shames theirs. But Wagner's defence of love over power, in the "Ring", strikes me as politically, as well as artistically, not without merit.

Rose makes a mistake in reading antisemitism into works that don't contain it, and another mistake in not recognising that Wagner's works have some moral merit which should not be thrown away.

Laon

Rating:
Summary: a very insightful work
Review: I think this is an excellent book, contrary to the other reviews listed. It helped me understand several new concepts related to anti-semitism, particularly how Jews were thought of as being responsible for commercializing the German art world and bringing the bourgeois capitalist element to European culture. The book sheds much light on the development of anti-semitism relative to the increasing nationalist and revolutionary spirit in Germany during the first part of the 20th century. Wagner's general psychology and racist attitudes are conveyed very effectively, and his influence on future national socialist ideology is more than apparent. This book added a great deal to my understanding of the roots of European anti-semitism, and I thank the author for this.

Rating:
Summary: Ultimately usefull,more questions than answers for Wagner
Review: Rose uncovers things we've always known about Richard Wagner, his virulent antisemiticism. He situates Wagner usefully in the philosophic mileau of the 19th Century and revolutionary thinking.However writers like Proudhon,Bauer,The Young Hegelians,and Fichte were relatively insignificant compared to Marx and the impact his thinking had of the ideologies of the 19th Century. Rose should have compared Wagner to Marx to define consummately what the term "revolution" really means. Also all these thinkers save Marx,were reactionary, which is why they appealed to Wagner. Rose's discussion of anarchist Bakunin, Wagner's Dresden Rebellion Days friend is even more problematic since Bakunin was ultimately a political opportunist, who would sell-out to save himself as he did countless times.Wagner was first and foremost a composer of music dramas,operas and his creative philosophic thinking remained energized toward that pursuit,which is why his fascination with 19th Century philosophic thought changed over his life. It actually became more conservative. Despite his early Dresden Days, Wagner was a political imbecile. He couldn't distinguish parties,nor collective wills. Given Wagner's unquestionable dominance in the world of Opera today, the crux of Rose's argument, Wagner's antisemiticism, is indeed a profoundly important one. But I doubt if this discussion will lead toward the banning of his music. The problem of racism in art is perhaps the most important issue facing all those who involve themselves in art. For art deals with communication, one human being speaking to another. One emotion projected outward to humanity. And if this expression emanates from a diseased mind, a racist one, well how can art reflect the highest thought man/woman is capable. Rose's discussion of Wagner's "Ring" was not thorough enough,for Wagner contradicts himself. Wotan is ever bit as self-serving as Alberich, the dwarf who Wagner had earmarked as the representational Jew. Brunhilde as well for all her humanity in saving Siegmund and Sieglinde,plots with the evil Hagen to kill Siegfried, her beloved. No character in the "Ring" is beyond redemption ,all are self-serving opportunists. Rose seems to focus on Alberich as Other, as representative of the lower class, the "lumpen" in contrast to the gods and immortals, when such reference is not important. Instead a discussion of how Wagner projects characterization, or doesn't. That his inhumanity prevented him from projecting a convincing character would have served Rose's argument.

Rating:
Summary: Accidental Expose
Review: What were you taught about Nazism? If you're like me, it was that Nazism was opposed to socialism. Indeed, it was socialism's "opposite": Nazism and Marxism constitute the two polar opposite ends of the spectrum of political thought. That they may sometimes seem to resemble each other is supposed to show only that opposite extremes may wrap around until they meet on the other side, or that fascism is a "confusing" ideology, too vague and elusive to explain or categorize. Hitler, as Ian Kearnshaw and many others claim, "was never a socialist." The Nazis' name: "National Socialist German Workers' Party", is supposed to be somehow a "misnomer"----some kind of "false advertising."

Or so we've been told. Rose's book is one of a growing number which helps to expose this revisionist fable. In fact, as many leading historians know, but don't like to talk about, fascism and National Socialism were both thoroughly socialist movements. They bitterly opposed the "bourgeois" ideology of capitalism: they bitterly opposed individualism, free trade, private property, free enterprise, limited government, and classical laissez-faire liberalism. "Almost the whole of National Socialism," as Hitler would freely admit (at least in private) was based on Marx. He explained in Mein Kampf: "As National Socialists we see our program in our flag. In the red we see the social idea of the movement." The Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939 was not at all a case of strange bedfellows.

How can this be?

First of all, as even social-democrat Sidney Hook has admitted, "Anti-Semitism was rife in almost all varieties of socialism." (Commentary, Sept. 1978) Listen to Proudhon, socialist founding father and mentor of Marx: "The Jew is the enemy of the human race. One must send this race back to Asia or exterminate it...By fire or fusion or by expulsion, the Jew must disappear... What the people of the Middle Ages hated by instinct I hate upon reflection, and irrevocably. ...The hatred of the Jew, as that of the English, must be an article of our political faith." (1847, Carnets)

Remember that the most central, fundamental, and essential tenet of socialism is that moneylenders ("capitalists") are evil economic "parasites." "Vampires," "bloodsuckers," Marx called them. The Devil of the socialist catechism is the "bourgeoisie." Indeed, Marx had another word which he used as an equivalent term for "bourgeoisie,"----"Jews." And in place of the word "capitalism," we find the early Marx using the word 'Judentum,' i.e., "Jewry." As early as 1843----a hundred years before the Holocaust----Marx published one of his first and most sensational newspaper articles, a vituperative anti-Semitic temper tantrum "On the Jewish Question," makes Hitler's own tirades look mild. Its thesis is that "mankind will never be emancipated until it is emancipated from Jews and Jewry." It concludes: "The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Jewry." Period. End of essay.

Understand that this popular piece was written and published five years before the Communist Manifesto (1848) and long before Das Kapital attempted to rationalize this as an economic theory in the 1860s. Rather than that Marx's dubious economic theory of exploitation accidentally drove him to anti-Semitism, it appears things must be more the other way around: that Marx's anti-Semitism drove him to cook up the dubious economic theory.

"If we are socialists, then we must definitely be anti-Semites," Hitler explained during a party speech in Munich, August 1920, "How, as a socialist, can you not be an anti-Semite?"

Note also that even the idea that Germany should wage a "world war" against Russia and the "barbaric" Slavs, and that the Slavs should be annhilated during this German "world storm," was an idea proposed by none other than Fredrich Engels, writing with Marx's approval in Marx's newspaper, in 1849. Both the advocation of genocide, and of coercive state eugenics generally, were originally a widespread aspect of the socialist movement before WWII.

"I have learned a great deal from Marxism, as I do not hesitate to admit." Hitler expalined, "I have really put into practice what these peddlers and pen-pushers have timidly begun."

That the Bolsheviks, German Social Democrats, and National Socialists eventually split up and came to fight against each other (while, of course, mutually accusing each other of being capitalist sell-outs), is no more significant than the fact that various Christian sects often will deny that other Christian sects are at all Christian, and indeed accuse them of being agents of Satan. To anyone who happens to stand outside of such movements, the hyperbole of internal quarrels among sects is hardly to be taken seriously. This is something Rose has come to understand. For another source, see also the unjustly marginalized "Lost Literature of Socialism," by George Watson.