Richard Wagner, born May 22, 1813, into the family of a municipal
court clerk, spent his childhood in Dresden, studied music in
Leipzig from 1831 to 1833 and worked later as a chorus and music
director in several towns, last in Riga. From 1839 to 1842 he
tried in vain to gain a place in the Parisian music community.
After the performances of his operas Rienzi and
The Flying Dutchman in Dresden, he was appointed as
the Royal Saxon music director of the court orchestra for life in
1843. After the completion of Lohengrin in May
1848, Wagner passionately engaged himself in the revolution.
Under the influence of his friend August Röckel, who
introduced him to the utopian-socialist ideas, he supported the
democratic-republican movement. He thought that the revolution
would bring a through-going democratization and renewal of
society, a unified nation-state, and basic reforms in the sphere
of culture and the arts that should put in practice his
theoretical ideas on art, especially his conception on the
complete work of art. His "Proposal for the Organization of a
German National Theater for the Kingdom of Saxony" remained,
however, unnoticed. At a meeting of the Dresden fatherland union
on June 14, he lectured on the subject "What about the character
of the republican efforts vis-à-vis the
kingdom?" in which he appealed to the Saxon king to renounce the
throne and to place himself at the head of the Free State of
Saxony as a president. After this incident Wagner was defamed
and snubbed in the court circles and by noble society in Dresden.
In Vienna where he took a trip in July he search in vain to find interest in his plans of theater reform or for performances of his operas. In autumn 1848, under the influence of the revolutionary events and the writings of Ludwig Feuerbach and Pierre-Jean Proudhon, Wagner conceived the fable that was later set to music in the tetralogy in his music festival, The Ring of the Nibelungen, the intellectual content was based on the concepts of "true socialism" and symbolically dealt with the struggle of humanity against the rule of gold. In personal contact with the Russian revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin in the spring of 1849, his democratic views had become more radical. He published several articles in the Volksblätter edited by August Röckel propagating anarchist colored, utopian-socialist concepts and established the necessity of a new revolutionary uprising.
Wagner was actively engaged in the Dresden uprising from May 3-9, 1849. He supported the provisional government, took part in the information service of the insurgents, and called upon the Saxon military to fraternize with the insurgents. Together with the leaders of the uprising, he left Dresden on May 9 for Chemnitz, from which the music director avoid the warrant for his arrest by flight to exile in Switzerland.
During the first years of his exile Wagner still hoped that the
revolution would break out again in Germany. For his own
ideological self-awareness and to define the objectives of his
artistic creation he wrote several works based on the ideas of
his last months in Dresden, among others Art and
Revolution (1849), The Work of Art of the
Future (1850) and Opera and Drama (1851).
After 1854, under the influence of the philosophy of Arthur
Schopenhauer, he modified his belief in progress, championed
pessimistic and fatalistic views, and saw the sense of his art as
the moral refinement of humanity. In Switzerland Wagner created
many of his musical works which made him the greatest German
musical dramatist of the 19th century and established his world-wide
reputation. In 1862 Wagner was granted an amnesty by the
Saxon government. Wagner acquired in 1864 the Bavarian King
Ludwig II as his patron, with whose support he could carry out
his idea of a festival theater for the performance of his operas
in Bayreuth in 1876.
Richard Wagner, Mein Leben 2 vols. Leipzig 195
8.
Richard Wagner Ausgewählte Schriften Esther
Drusche (ed.) Leipzig 1982.
_______. Briefe Werner Otto (ed.) Berlin
1986.
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: Sein Leben, sein
Werk, sein Jahrhundert Berlin 1984.
JGC revised this file
(http://www.ohiou.edu/~chastain/rz/wagner.htm) on
October 27, 2004.
Please E-mail comments or suggestions to chastain@www.ohiou.edu
© 1999, 2004 James Chastain.
Rolf Weber
Bibliography