Winifred Wagner
Winifred Margaret Wagner (b. 23 June 1897 in Hastings, England; d. 5 March 1980 in Überlingen, West Germany) was the wife of Siegfried Wagner, son of famed composer Richard Wagner. From 1930 until 1945 she was Director of the Bayreuth Festival.
Family
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She was born Winifred Marjorie Williams, the daughter of Welsh journalist John Williams, and his half-English, half-Danish wife and actress, Emily Florence née Karop, in Hastings, England. Winifred's parents died by the time she was two years old and she was placed in St.Margaret's Orphanage in East Grinstead, Sussex. In April 1907 a relation of her mother's, Henriette Klindworth née Karop, already aged 70, agreed to take Winifred in. They had now lived in Berlin for decades. Henrietta's 77 year-old husband Karl, a renowned German virtuoso pianist, conductor, violinist, composer, piano teacher and the founder of the Karl Klindworth Music Conservatory in Berlin, had been a star pupil of Franz Liszt, the father of Richard Wagner's widow, Cosima. In 1854 Karl went to and resided in London for 14 years then to Moscow where he became friendly with Tchaikovsky. Karl wrote to Cosima about Winifred: "At our advanced age, we have now taken upon ourselves something else to worry about - the care and education of a nice young girl who is completely without means and all alone in the world. She is a little English girl, a distant relation of ours - and now we must hope to live long enough for her to achieve sufficient independence to make her own way." The childless Klindworths were German nationals but they spoke English at home, as Henrietta had only a limited command of German. Winifred later said that her arrival in Berlin was the beginning of her new life.
Winifred married the conductor-composer Siegfried Wagner (d. 4 Aug 1930), son of Richard Wagner, on 22 September, 1915. They had four children.
Politics
Winifred was very outspoken in support of Hitler during his imprisonment following the Munich Putsch, referring to him as "this German man ...who has taken upon himself the dangerous task of getting the working class to open their eyes to the inner enemy and to Marxism and its consequences." Unable to make the long journey to Landsberg Fortress, nearly seven and a half hours from Bayreuth, Winifred set to work along with Eva Chamberlain (daughter of Richard Wagner and wife of Houston Stewart Chamberlain (d.Jan 1927) whom they jointly nursed for years), collecting money, clothes and food for the families of imprisoned party members there.
According to Winifred's daughter Friedelind:
"Mother first joined the National Socialist Party in 1920 or 1921. She was not one of the original seven but she was well among the first few hundred. In those early days when it was Hitler's job to fill out the membership cards in the party's dark little hole of an office behind a Munich pub, the cards bore no numbers. When the party was reorganized after Hitler's release from prison, Mother joined again and her number was in the eighty thousands."
In May 1923, Adolf Hitler made his first visit to Richard Wagner's home, the Villa Wahnfried in Bayreuth. Having already met Hitler in Munich, Winifred Wagner was now certain that he would "be the savior of Germany." However, following the failed Munich putsch he was imprisoned in Landsberg fortress on 1st April 1924.
Freidelind tells us further in her autobiography that even official warnings could not prevent her mother's political work: "The chief of police summoned her to his office and gave her a paternal warning to stop this nonsense or one of these days she would land in gaol, but nothing influenced her." Wagner's first granddaughter even revealed Winifred as the source of Hitler's supplies for the writing of Mein Kampf:
"Since [Winifred] knew that many others were sending sweets to Germany's convicted 'savior', she tried to think of something else that he might need. At the stationer's on Bayreuth's main street she bought quantities of paper; typewriting paper, carbon paper, pencils, pens, ink, erasers. We helped her tie them up and they looked as gay as a collection of Christmas packages. She didn't know that Hitler had literary aspirations but it was on her paper and with her ink and pencils that he wrote the first volume of Mein Kampf. As long as he was in prison she sent him supplies of everything a presumed genius might need."
Hitler used his materials to write to Winifred from Landsberg. He expressed regrets that he was now unable to visit Bayreuth in November on his way to Berlin. (He was released on December 20th.) Hitler's letter would also express elation at the recent success of the National Socialists in the elections held in Bayreuth: "Great pride filled me when I saw the volkisch victory in precisely the city wherein first 'The Master' and then Chamberlain forged the spiritual sword we now wield."
In 1929 Therese Elisabeth Nietzsche, the sister of the famous philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, was a guest of the Wagners at Bayreuth, of which visit Karl Hoeffkes made a short silent film.[1] Therese was the founder and director of the Weimar "Nietzsche Archive", which still exists today.
Bayreuth 1930-1939
On April 1, 1930 Cosima Wagner died[2], having outlived Richard Wagner by 47 years. Four months later, on August 4, her son, the largely apolitical Siegfried Wagner died. The two central figures who would dominate Bayreuth in the next decade were Winifred Wagner and Adolf Hitler.
Winifred now became director of the Bayreuth Festival.[3] Previously, Winifred had not taken any direct role in productions at the Festspielhaus and was not a trained musician. Winifred's position was not helped by the retirement of long-time conductor Karl Muck, who had conducted at every Festival since 1901 - his name becoming synonomous with Parsifal. Winifred replaced Muck with the great Wilhelm Furtwangler, who became a famous Wagnerian conductor as well as Director of the Berlin Philharmonic. Later difficulties with Furtwangler would lead to the appointment in 1933 of Heinz Tietjen as artistic director of the Festival.
Throughout this period, Winifred continued to avidly support Adolf Hitler. Friedelind Wagner writes in her autobiography:
"Mother and the grown-ups went directly from the church to the election booths to vote for Hitler who for the first time was running for President. Feeling in Germany was high: for weeks Mother had been getting threatening letters from the opposition. The anti-National Socialist newspaper in Bayreuth, noting the flowers that were delivered to Wahnfried for Wieland and me, announced that they were for Mother's wedding to Hitler. This was the basis of the rumor that the opposition papers repeated at every opportunity. It both amused and plagued us for several years."
Throughout the 1930's, Bayreuth would became a show place of Wagnerian glory. Hitler and other leading Party dignitaries would make a point of attending the Festivals. Hitler would sometimes even set up temporary residence at Wahnfried. Bayreuth would be draped in Swastika flags and the main access road to the Festspielhaus was renamed Adolf-Hitler-strasse. Hitler's support meant much to Winifred as he was the first head of a German State to take interest in the festival since Ludwig II.
The Allied Occupation
Following Germany's defeat in World War II, Winifred Wagner was accused by the victorious Allies of having been one of Hitler's most fanatical supporters and considered to be a "major National Socialist offender". She was then forced to stand trial by the Allied Powers.
Winifred's defence was that the NSDAP opposed the Wagners and that only Hitler himself supported Bayreuth. This was not very convincing for the Allied pseudo-judges. Winifred was sentenced by them to 450 days hard labour and a five year ban on all active involvement as a school-teacher, preacher, editor, writer or radio-commentator and forced her to withdraw entirely from any role in the Bayreuth Festival.
Refusing to denounce Hitler (like her friend Diana Mitford) as so many others did after the war, Winifred wrote truthfully in a 1947 letter to a friend, "I more or less remained faithful until the bitter end, only because I knew this man [Hitler] to be kind, noble and helpful. It was the man and not the Party that held me." In the years following the war, Winifred Wagner was told of the atrocity films made by the Allies of German concentration camps by her grandchildren. She would explain to them, "That is all falsified, all misrepresented".
In later years Winifred often invited family members and relatives of high Party officials to sit with her in the family box at the Festspielhaus and to various parties and receptions. Among these guests were, Edda, daughter of Herman Goering, Ilse, wife of Rudolf Hess, and the niece of Heinrich Himmler.
In 1975, an unrepentant, proud woman would declare in an interview with German film maker Hans Jurgen Syberberg,
"I shall never disavow my friendship with [Hitler]; I cannot do it... I am able, I mean, perhaps no one understands, but I am able completely to separate the Hitler I knew from what he is accused of these days......he part of him I know, so to speak, I treasure as much today as before. If Hitler came to the door today, for example, I would be just as pleased and happy as ever to see him and to have him here."
The same year Winifred was also interviewed by British historian, David Irving.
Winifred Wagner died in March 1980 at Überlingen, a city on the northern shore of Lake Constance (Bodensee) in Baden-Württemberg near the border with Switzerland. Her son Wieland continued the direction of the Bayreuth Festival until his own death in October 1966. His funeral was a major event with many wreaths from leading figures including the President of West Germany.[4]
Sources
- Hamann, Brigitte, Winifred Wagner: a life at the Heart of Hitler's Bayreuth, English edition by Granta Books, London, 2005, ISBN: 1-86207-671-5.
