Language:
English
Year of publication:
2006
Titel der Quelle:
Holocaust Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
12,3 (2006) 89-106
Keywords:
Wagner, Richard,
;
Hitler, Adolf,
;
Antisemitism History 1800-2000
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
National socialism Philosophy
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Abstract:
Rejects the view that Hitler's fascination with Wagner, the man and the musician, originated in the latter's antisemitism. Stresses, rather, that Hitler's attitude toward the composer was a private, intimate matter. Wagner's operas exhilarated Hitler and empowered him to become the redemptive leader he believed himself to be. The Führer used the aesthetics and the Germanic content of the operas to stir the public (e.g. during Nazi rallies) into a sense of racial superiority and national destiny that led to the horrors of the Third Reich and its "Götterdämmerung". Discusses the antisemitism of the Wagner clan and racist theories, like those of Wagner, which Hitler did not necessarily believe in but which he made use of for political purposes.
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