"Richard Wagner's villa Wahnfried at the time this film was made," "April 1975, after the last war's bombs, and after Wieland Wagner's death who used to live in there until his death." "Wahnfried before it was rebuilt as a museum." "Let's remember, built eight years before Richard Wagner's death, with the help of Ludwig's gift of 25.000 talers." "Finally peace for himself and his family of seven and the many friends." "A life-work and a private victory, this house." "The artist's villa as utopia of an ideal world." "Could that work out?" "This illusion of a privately realized dream of an earthly paradise?" "Work out for the home and the hearth after his death?" "For the rooms and their treasures?" "With family portraits by Ingres and Lehnbach, and the marble figures from Siegfried to Parsifal?" "For the famous four grand pianos and the expensive silk wallpapers in the salons where he composed and received visitors?" "Above, the coats-of-arms of the Imperial German provinces and towns and their Wagner Associations below the ceiling." "A burdensome inheritage for the heirs." "Let's remember:" "Cosima, custodian of the hearth, later of the grail, famous and notorious, the aristocratic adultress, born out of wedlock and daughter of Liszt, from France, primordial mother of the Atreides of Bayreuth." "The fame wants it so, and the family's reputation." "Another burdensome inheritance in dark times" "when one had to represent a cultural monument." "Wahnfried" "And then the guests, one must try to imagine the guests:" "often more than a hundred, men like Ludwig II, the German Emperor and Hitler, they surrounded this house, as well as Nietzsche," "Gobineau," "Houston Stewart Chamberlain," "European thinkers of the late 19th century and their books," "titles like:" ""The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music", and "The Case of Wagner"" "by Nietzsche," "Chamberlain's "The Foundations of the 19th Century"" "and Gobineau's "The Inequality of Human Races"," ""My Life" by Richard Wagner and "My Struggle" by Hitler and ..." ""Night over Bayreuth" [Heritage of Fire] by Friedelind Wagner, the renegade daughter of Siegfried and Winifred and Richard Wagner's grandchild." "Could that work out fine?" "The cultural revolution of a musician, the mythical alternative world, as opposed to the Industrial Age?" "Wahnfried, the old enchanted fairy-tale, as Friedelind Wagner writes about her youth, this beautiful confusing world of traditions, as she writes." "This is one side of the tale." "What about the tears?" "Were there no tears?" "Of course there were as one can well imagine." "Wagner's music, the representative Bayreuth, the Wagner family and the many heirs, all this is fatally connected, inseparably, inseparable the brilliance and the mistakes, the private and the official." "Nowhere else, family history and national culture were as inextricably entwined." "Let's remember: in this garden there were family scenes with Richard Strauss and Furtwängler, with Hitler, walking up and down, with Wieland, the grandson... and the Führer's darling." "Without the music, without Richard Wagner's daily struggle for this music, his private artist's utopia, Wahnfried, was turned into a bourgeois idyll by his heirs, and perhaps just because of this, an easy prey for the Third Reich." "Because this too belongs to the history of the idyll of Wahnfried." "In the back of the park, on the grave of Richard Wagner and Cosima, in 1945, coloured US soldiers danced with blond girls." "Jazz in the moonlight, that's what was being told at the time." "So now, Wahnfried today:" "after the bombs and Wieland Wagner who built his house into the ruins after '45, in the style of his era, the Adenauer era." "He just built it right into the middle, into the ruins of his fathers, into the house where earlier, the rooms and chairs, the books and pianos were taboo for everyone, not to be touched, not, for instance, by the children," "because "the Master" had touched them." "Is this the devilish revenge of things?" "Of the props, the reliquies?" "If Wieland the grandson, an artist like Richard, only knows how to save and liberate himself from the oppression of tradition by breaking everything in the house Wahnfried left over by the bombs in 1945, the fixtures and the remaining walls of the hall," "and the graves of dogs and parrots in the garden." "All this is being undone now, torn down, ruined, after his death," "his house too." "Revenge and curse of the spirits of the hearth." "If it can only liberate itself by the collapse of the empire under which the house had suspiciously grown, in order to develop its worlds and forces, by destroying the old aura." "Let's remember:" "nowhere else, family history and national culture were as inextricably entwined." "Wagner's Bayreuth used to be private property until very recently." "So, the history of the house Wahnfried from 1914 until 1975, and Winifred," "Winifred Wagner as witness." "She tells her own version of the truth, after a silence of 30 years," "60 years of German and European cultural history, in a subjective manner, through the example of a family and its house." "Wahnfried itself is already a myth, and so is Wahnfried's downfall and the decline of the German bourgeosie." "Told and recorded in Siegfried Wagner's former bachelor house, her actual residence, on the left side of the entrance of Wahnfried which used to be the guest house for Toscanini and Furtwängler, and for Hitler." "Winifred Wagner" "Winifred Wagner and the history of the house Wahnfried 1914-75" "A film by Hans Jürgen Syberberg" "Winifred Wagner - reel 1" "Will you give me a special sign when it's on?" "The beginning will certainly be difficult." "I was born in 1897 to British Parents in Hastings/England." "My father was a writer, theatre critic and constructed bridges along the way." "My mother ran away from home as a young girl to be an actress." "My father met her on the stage, while working as theatre critic." "At that time it was absolutely unheard of that young people from decent bourgeois families became actors." "Unfortunately I lost both parents when I was only two." "My father died when I was one year old, the mother when I was two years old." "So I was an orphan." "I had no brothers or sisters and only few relatives... who they tried to look after me, but again and again abandoned me, so that as I child I was more or less passed from hand to hand," "until, when I was four," "I was suddenly sent to Germany where relatives from my paternal grandfather's side lived." "They had no children and might be willing to adopt me." "I was sent packing at the age of four, came to Gotha, to a mathematician's home." "His name was Karp and he was the head mathematician of the Gotha Insurance Company and honorary doctor of the Jena University." "I was very happy in his house, but less happy were my adoptive parents, because I was far too wild as a child" "So after a few months they sent me straight back to England." "This caused a general consternation, what to do with this wild thing, and I was put in an orphanage." "Those were very unhappy years for me." "In England you're sent to school at the age of five." "I spent my first school years there and fell quite ill when I was nine years old." "The doctors prescribed a continental climate." "Now the question was again "where"?" "Then my guardian remembered that there lived a cousin of my grandfather's in Berlin." "She was the wife of Karl Klindworth, the famous piano pedagogue who made the piano scores for Richard Wagner." "A childless couple, they lived in the fruit-growing colony Eden near Berlin." "My guardian asked them if I could stay with them for six weeks to convalesce." "An old friend of Klindworth's brought me to the colony Eden in Oranienburg near Berlin." "And I immediately felt at home there." "But it never occurred to me that I might be able to stay there permanently." "For he was now 78 and his wife 70." "And they didn't have any children." "Klindworth took care of me in a very touching way." "He immediately started to give me German lessons." "He proceeded like this:" "He sat down at the piano and played folk and nursey songs for me." "And I had to try to recite the lyrics, or rather, sing them." "This way learnt my first German in an almost playful way." "He also sent me to the village school where I could only play with the other children." "I couldn't attend classes yet." "The first German sentence I learnt was:" ""Who's afraid of the black man?"" ""Nobody" was the correct answer." "That was my first German phrase." "Now back to Klindworth." "Klindworth was a pupil of Liszt, one of his favourite pupils." "He met Richard Wagner in London in 1855." "At that time Klindworth was earning his living by giving piano lessons." "And Liszt gave Wagner a letter of recommendation to Klindworth when Wagner went to London to earn his living there too." "So they knew each other since 1855." "At that time Wagner showed Klindworth the Valkyrie score, which Klindworth immediately played on the piano on sight." "That's why Klindwonh became the expert piano score writer for the "Ring" for Wagner." "So by and by he wrote the entire piano score for the "Ring", parts of it in Moscow where he went later." "This acquaintance developed into a lifelong friendship." "Later, when Klindworth went back to Berlin, together with Hans von Bülow, a great friend of his, he founded the Klindworth Conservatory." "They both gave lessons there." "Through Bülow, Klindwort got to know very early Cosima," "Liszt's daughter, later Richard Wagner's wife." "And through all the confusion of these marriages, Klindworth managed to remain friends with both Wagner, Bülow and Cosima." "Well, let's see what happens next." "Of course, at the Klindworths' I was brought up completely in the spirit of Wagner and Bayreuth." "All the famous conductors and artists frequented the Klindworths' Berlin home." "Every year, Klindworth got an invitation to Bayreuth to the dress rehearsals, which at that time were very exclusive." "Ony a few rows in the audience were allowed, and Klindworth was among the regular guests." "Before 1914 he always refused to take me with him;" "he thought I was too immature." "I was naturally initiated into all of Wagner's works." "When I was 17 he thought that I was now more or less ready for Bayreuth." "He asked Frau Cosima Wagner, if, due to his advanced age, if he could bring a companion, namely his adopted child." "ln Wahnfried eveyone knew exactly who I was, because Klindworth corresponded regularly with Cosima." "He had told her a lot about his decision to adopt me, and about my education." "Everyone knew who I was and everyone gave me a vey kind welcome." "So in 1914, for the dress rehearsals, I went to Bayreuth for the first time in my life." "At that time I was greatly impressed by the "Ring", the Flying Dutchman and Parsifal." "I got to know the whole Wagner family." "at first, my future mother-in-law." "Klindworth was allowed to visit her every morning." "She used these occasions to welcome me warmly." "And when we left, she again addressed very kind words to me." "Then the two old people went for a walk and I was left sitting in the hall of Wahnfried." "My sisters-in-law to be," "Mrs Eva Chamberlain, Countess Gravina and Daniela Thode took turns to look after me and chat with me." "At that time I was deeply impressed by Frau Cosima Wagner." "Her regal apperance and imposing figure ..." "Change of reel at the time, she used to walk with a ..." " we have to change the reel every 10 minutes" " I see" "... an orphan quite early left all alone ... let me try to think" "To get back to my parents ..." "My father, like all Englishmen, spent a long time in India, and got infected there by serious hepatitis which caused his early death." "My mother was his second wife and was at least 25 years younger than he." "I was told later that they were very happily married." "I cannot remember my parents at all, but I have a beautiful pottrait of my mother which my son Wieland once painted in oil from an old photograph." "This was so to speak a postcript to my own parents." "The portrait hangs on the wall behind me." "Her father died in 1889 of hepatitis, her mother of typhus in 1899." "WW was orphaned at 2." "The deepest impression on my first visit to Bayreuth made my future husband." "I fell head over heels in love with Siegfried." "Strangely, it was his voice which totally captivated me." "Little did I dream that apparently I had also made an impression on him." "During the years 1914/15, we must remember that the First World War had broken out by then," "Siegfried came frequently to Berlin to conduct charity concerts for the Red Cross, and he used every opponunity to call on the Klindworths." "He always did this on his Berlin visits, but this time, even the old Klindworth couple noticed how often he called." "I still had no inkling that he had certain intentions, regarding myself." "And this went on till July 1915, then we got engaged." "A speedy marriage was planned, first, because Siegfried was 28 years older than me, and then, because we wanted his mother, Cosima Wagner, to be able to enjoy grandchildren eventually." "So the wedding was planned for the 22nd of September, 1915." "It was held in Bayreuth because of my mother-in-law, otherwise she couldn't have attended." "And again, because of her state of health, both the civil and the church ceremony took place in the hall at Wahnfried." "Just a small family wedding, with only the closest friends." "By 10 o'clock we were already on our way to Dresden where strangely enough, my husband had to conduct a "Bärenhäuter" performance." "Then we went on our honeymoon to Bad Homburg vor der Höhe." "But this too had to be cut short." "Our regular musical director, Kittel, was on leave from the army and was to arrange a piano score of my husband's work." "So he had to get back to Bayreuth." "Now I'll come back to the outbreak of the war and its effect on Bayreuth." "On the 2nd August 1914, when the war broke out, the festival had to be interrupted of course." "At that time, I didn't live here yet, but I've been told the story again and again." "It was so to speak the ruin of Bayreuth." "We hadn't signed any contracts." "Of course, no clause of "force majeure" whatsoever." "And about 350.000 marks had to be refunded for tickets for performances which were cancelled." "And even some of the artists, but only a few, demanded their fees in full." "But most of them were satisfied to be paid only for their actual performances." "But this meant that the festival funds were completely used up." "Then, there was a ten year break until 1924." "Nothing financial could be undertaken before the stabilization of the currency." "Life in Bayreuth during the war was vey different from life during the festival times or rather festival periods." "My husband was busy mainly with composing." "He needed about two years to complete an opera." "Starting with the first drafts, till the finished score." "For the rest, he conducted a lot of concerts, for he also had to earn his living." "The concerts took him through the whole of Europe." "Mostly I stayed at home, for money was rapidly losing its value, the inflation got worse and worse." "And if he had taken me with him on tour, he wouldn't have broguht home any earnings at all." "In the meantime, in 1917, 1918, 1919 and 1920, four children were born to us." "My mother-in-law took a special delight in them." "The children, as soon as they were able to toddle, were always allowed to visit her in her rooms on the first floor at Wahnfried." "She allowed the children all sorts of liberties." "They even tried to brush her teeth, comb her hair." "She was quite delightful with the children." "Our daily routine was roughly as follows:" "Siegfried got up very early, at 6 a.m." "and before breakfast he worked for an hour on the fair copy of his score." "I must add, he had his own little bachelor house, on the left side, when driving up to Wahnfried." "He lived there until his marriage, and later, in the "little house" as we called it, he used to have his study." "He composed there, wrote his letters, received his friends." "He only came to Wahnfried for the meals and ... to sleep and so on." "So he got up in the morning at 6, then we had breakfasted together;" "later with some of the children too, depending on their age, then came the mail which was always dealt with at breakfast." "Mostly, Mrs Chamberlain, Siegfried's sister Eva, came over with the mail." "And when she opened and read out the letters, she always imitated the writer's voice." "Which was very funny, sometimes we nearly died of laughing." "Eva was married to the writer Houston Stewart Chamberlain." "They lived in a house near Wahnfried." "She supervised her mother's daily routine, and that's why she came over every morning." "She laid down exactly which visitors my mother-in-law could receive during the day." "Her meals were served exactly according to the doctor's instructions, frequent but small quantities of food, every two hours a little snack." "Let's take Eva:" "She received Cosima's diaries later which even today are still unpublished." "Well, now I'll begin again with Eva." "please do" "When I first came to Wahnfried as a young woman, just 18 years old, it was assumed that Eva, Cosima Wagner's youngest daughter and my husband's youngest sister, would teach me housekeeping." "Now I had been sent, after finishing school, to a housekeeping school for girls in Berlin, for old Klindworth didn't want people to say that he had ... how do you call this?" "to a future husband ... had given him a bad housewife." "It turned out very fast that I knew far more about housekeeping than Eva." "This led to all sorts of conflicting situations until Siegfried intervened and pronounced a Salomonic judgement:" ""As long as Eva is living in the house", she stayed until the 1st of May, 1916," ""she will run the household;" "later my wife will take over."" "And that's how it was done." "It was the same with my piano playing." "Daniela, Frau Thode, my eldest sister-in-law, got hold of me and wanted to play four-handed with me each day." "It went very well, but she had a dominating nature and she occupied about 3/4 of the piano for herself and I had about 1/4 for myself." "Those weren't very enjoyable hours." "Siegfried found that out very soon." "As I was expecting my first child, Siegfried simply declared that the doctor had forbidden me to play the piano." "And then these things came to an end too." "Our life in Wahnfried in the beginning was like this:" "The two Chamberlains were still living in Wahnfried and having their meals there, later they moved into their house quite close by." "From then on I was the mistress of the house." "My mother-in-law had some rooms for herself on the first floor of Wahnfried, together with her old maid Dora Glaser, who looked after her." "Her day was arranged as follows:" "She came down in the morning and mostly sat in the hall, or rather lay down there." "Her personal physician, Schwenninger, famous as Bismarck's doctor, had prescribed that she should always lie down and put her legs up." "She lay there until the 2nd breakfast." "During that time, she mostly summoned me." "She took the view that a young woman should occupy herself." "So she gave me French lessons." "I had to write letters in French to her daughters, especially to Blandine who used to live in Italy at the time." "I read a lot to her, mostly in French, as an exercise." "But she was interested in all the literary classics," "German, French, English, Spanish, Italian, Swiss classics, I read from all of them to her." "Then came her morning walk." "Usually she went through the park into town." "She had the habit of going into individual shops to rest there a bit." "Each shopkeeper was delighted when she arrived and sat down." "And she always bought some trifles." "And after I moved into the house, she mostly bought something for me, tiny little bits, a brooch or a paperweight or things like that." "At noon she was put to bed again." "In the afternoon she was usually permitted to receive friends." "There was Hans Richter who had settled down in Bayreuth," "Hans von Wolzogen belonged to her intimates, and the indispensable Adolf von Gross, who after Richard Wagner's death had settled the family's and festival's financial affairs." "These three were the most frequent visitors." "At first they always came to tea, the whole family was united for tea, and one of the three was usually there." "There were also frequently visitors from out of town." "One of the most popular visitors was Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria." "It was a great pleasure to listen to them." "They conversed in French in the old style." "Always full of wit, sometimes mixed with contemporay things." "He was a man of such esprit and education ..." "that, as I said, frequenting him was a great pleasure." "He often took me in his car to the Eremitage." "There he explained to me every single plant, every tree, every bird call." "He knew them all perfectly well." "I can still remember him with my son Wieland, he was 4 or 5 at the time," "Wieland once pulled an enormous ring off his finger with a valuable stone." "The Tsar would even have given it to Wieland, but I prevented that." "Either before or after tea, my mother-in-law went for another walk for half an hour." "We took a car and drove to the surroundings of Bayreuth." "We got out, then the car was then sent on and we followed on foot." "Often we went to the Eremitage, or to the Fantasie [castle] or the Students' Forest." "In the evening another hour was spend reading." "But it wasn't always me who had to read out, sometimes one of the daughters read, Eva or Daniela." "Then very early she was brought upstairs and put to bed." "She had a parrot in an adjoining room, who used to follow very carefully the going-to-bed ceremony." "Once in bed she had a bottle of beer, probably as a nightcap." "The parrot always used to imitate the gurgling sound of the beer." "And when the beer was finished, the parrot used to call out "Good night, good night"." "Whereupon my mother-in-law answered :" ""Good night, Kockel, good night, Kockel."" "The parrot couldn't stand Eva Chamberlain." "And he annoyed her as much as he could." "Evey time Eva came into the room, the parrot belched, because that was apparently an affliction of Eva's." "The parrot had found that out and imitated that." ""Herr von Bülow should never have married."" "The relationship between myself and my mother-in-law was extremely delightful." "We never had any misunderstandings." "She never got annoyed at me or make unfriendly remarks." "I completely trusted her." "I was often alone with her alone and she told me some very intimate things." "I remember her telling me suddenly:" ""Herr von Bülow should never have married."" "Telling this to a much younger woman is certainly a mark of confidence which I appreciated very much." "She had a great sense of humour, something which no one believes." "She was always considered as a dignified, reserved and proud woman." "Naturally she was a product of the ancien régime of Paris, of strict upbringing and of aristocratic surroundings, that's for sure." "But she had a great sense of humour and liked laughing." "And she also liked drinking." "My husband always used threaten her with his finger and call her "you little Noah"." "I didn't know that Noah also liked to drink." "But he must have, otherwise he wouldn't have called his mother Noah." "Cosima's advice to the "child"?" "No, my mother-in-law never gave me any advice." "At the most, she saw to it that I was occupied." "I already mentioned it, but I might add that every morning I had to dust in the so-called great salon." "She then came to make an exact check, almost like Pauline Strauss [de Ahna], whether I had dusted everything properly." "It was actually our servant's job to do this." "He used to stand in a corner and grin while Mama checked my dusting." "My youth was taken rather as a joke at Wahnfried." "They used to laugh at me a lot." "Particularly because I came from Berlin and apparently I spoke with a strong Berlin accent." "In this house this sounded rather odd." "They made me lose that accent after a while." "I forgot to say that when I came first to Germany, I was sent to Hanover which was supposed to be the best place to learn German." "Klindworth was a Hanoverian and had a lot of relatives there, and there I was put up by his nephew and learned my German there." "The two Englanders in Bayreuth, Winifred + H. St. Chamberlain" "In Hanover I spent 3 month only with Germans, I had German private lessons." "And when the grandparents, that how I called the Klindworths, I couldn't bring myself to call them father and mother, because of their age, when they visited me on Christmas, I couldn't speak a word of English, but spoke in fact fluent German already." "My English came back to me later again." "But I speak English more like an English child, not like an educated Englishwoman, because I never again spent a longer period in England, at most a fortnight, sometimes 10 days." "During the First World War it was impossible to speak English." "That was frowned upon." "During the festival of 1924, the first after the war, I spoke English with some English people in our opera box." "Somebody asked me in an outraged voice to speak German in "this house"." "I answered that I did it out of politeness." "That I thought if you were in England and didn't speak any English that you too would be glad if somebody spoke German with you." "That's how I tried to defend myself against that reproach." "In Wahnfried we spoke only German." "I never I spoke English with my brother-in-law Chamberlain." "I had a funny relationship with him too." "We got on very well, but always in a humorous fashion, everything was treated with humour." "My husband also had a good sense of humour." "That's why I, young and naive as I was, got on so well with the others." "My husband for instance wrote to a friend in Berlin, the painter Stassen:" ""Without any embarrassment she sits down on the most festive chairs."" "There was an armchair in the great salon on which Richard Wagner had sat every evening, read out to the family or chatted with them." "There's a famous photograph where they sit around a tea kettle, a family gathering in the evening." "And Wagner is sitting in that chair." "But no one had told me that this was a sacred chair, and I had sat down in it quite unconcernedly." "So no one made life difficult for me in Wahnfried." "Cosima on Richard Wagner" "The strange thing is that she actually never talked about Wagner." "If she mentioned him at all, she referred to him as Wagner or Master." ""The Master"" "But she very rarely spoke about Wagner, and with me not at all." "Friedelind Wagner:" "...butit wassaid that she often called out his name in her sleep." "Everything was left untouched after his death." "... everything remained exactly where it had been during his lifetime, his glasses..." "The Erard for travelling, the black Steck on which Parsifal was written, the Steinway from New York 2." "Day" "To return once more to what I said yesterday, to be a bit more precise," "When I came to Wahnfried in 1915 at the age of 18, there lived here my mother-in-law, Cosima Wagner, aged 78, my sister-in-law Daniela: 54, my sister-in-law Blandine: 52, my sister-in-law Isolde whom I never got to know unfortunately: 49," "my sister-in-law Eva: 47, and my husband: 45." "So there were 28 years difference in age between me and my husband, as I already said." "And as a coincidence, I am now 78, the exact age my mother-in-law was when I came to Wahnfried as a young woman." "So the age differences among the generation were relatively great." "There were no young people at all." "I was so to speak "the child"" "and was sometimes treated as such." "But not for long, I soon managed to assert myself." "A few pictures would perhaps be helpful, of the personages we spoke about yesterday." "Here for instance is the sacred chair I sat on." "A picture of Richard Wagner, sitting on that chair, next to him Cosima, the philosopher, Heinrich von Stein, who as a young man was my husband's tutor." "Next to him, the painter Joukowsky, who made the first sketches for Parsifal." "Those sets were used until 1933." "Next is sitting my eldest sister-in-law Daniela, later Frau Thode, and to the right, my sister-in-law Blandine, who later married the Italian Count Gravina." "So much about the sacred chair." "This picture of my husband and my mother-in-law might be of special interest." "Their relationship was a very close one, and they got on very well." "Siegfried, until the end of his life, was very devoted to his mother." "These photos were taken about 1912, so she was about 75." "As a bridegroom, my husband looked something like this, this picture was taken at that time." "Here with his brother-in-law, Henri Thode, the art historian." "Is that enough?" "Here a smaller picture, my husband with the Thodes." "Here one of the Gravina children, Gilbert Gravina." "He was my sister-in-law Blandine's third child." "He was a conductor and flautist and in 1914 played in the Bayreuth Orchestra as flautist." "He died only two years ago at the age of 82." "He was my nephew, just to point out the generation gap." "A Picture of my youngest sister-in-law, Eva, with her husband, the Englishman Houston Stewart Chamberlain." "They married in 1907." "Unfortunately he died in 1927." "He was a very sick man at the end of his life, was bedridden for years and could hardly speak." "The only ones who could understand him were Eva and myself." "I mentioned yesterday that at the afternoon teas my mother-in-law still was able to attend, old friends of the family were invited to join." "Here Hans von Wolzogen and Hans Richter." "My husband and myself whom you all will recognize." "Josef Pembaur, the famous pianist, and his wife." "He gave a concert in Bayreuth on the 30th anniversary of Franz Liszt's death." "The others are painter Franz Stassen, a friend of my husband," "And my sister-in-law Eva Chamberlain." "My mother-in-law on her 80th birthday, with Wieland, not yet one year old, he had his first birthday on 5th January and Cosima Wagner had turned 80 on 25th December." "This was taken on the same day." "The 80 year old grandmother and her grandchild, almost one year old, Wieland." "A picture, taken shortly after our marriage." "Last photos of my husband, from 1930, shortly before his death." "You won't be able to see much on this one, just a typical picture of our afternoon walks with Cosima." "Taken on the Röhrensee." "Well I don't know what else to show from the so-called family album." "Here we are on the left page." "We used to be keen walkers." "We went for walks for at least an hour each day, mostly even for two hours." "You can see somthing typical here, I always had to take a book with me." "As soon as we sat down somewhere, Siegfried insisted that I read to him." "I had to read out all the themes which he used in his operas, whether it was history or sagas or" "ballads or whatever ..." "just everything which interested him." "Here's again the picture I showed you before." "And on this page my mother-in-law walking in town." "In the afternoons she drove into the countryside, in the mornings into town." "Here she's on a walk with with my husband." "I mentioned that my mother-in-law liked to take a rest during her walks." "Here's a picture where she rests at the Röhrensee." "On this page you see our eldest son Wieland, just 6 months old." "This is a wartime picture of the Wahnfried garden." "What was normally a meadow was planted with potatoes during the war." ""In the garden where my delusion (Wahn) found peace (Frieden), potatoes are now being planted"" "somebody wrote to me furiously, he found it most unsuitable." "But it was important to provide the family with enough to eat." "On this page, more photos with Wieland." "My mother-in-law, when not busy with walks and other activities, she spent most of her time in the summer in the garden in a deck-chair." "Then we were allowed to visit her and entertain her." "Here's Daniela on this picture." "Pictures of Wieland, the first-born." "On this page the famous Scottish Skye terriers." "Here the children have increased." "Here is Friedelind, our second child." "And Wolfgang, our third child and second son." "Our marvelous nanny, who died only recently, she faithfully served our house for 50 years." "First she brought up all the children, and later when they put on the soldiers' pants and put her out of a job, she became my housekeeper, and later still she worked for my son Wieland." "Yesterday I told you about Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria." "I don't know if the camera can capture these pictures." "The old gentleman with the stick in the middle, that's the Tsar with his two daughters." "Here's my sister-in-law Blandine Gravina and little Wieland." "Verena, our fourth child, on this picture." "Here all four of them together." "This is Verena, she was born in December 1920." "She's about three months old." "These are photos by Hielscher, the well known photographer." "He worked a lot with backlight, the pictures are quite nice actually." "Wahnfried in summer, the alley under the green leaves." "A picture of the old hall, unfortunately now destroyed." "But now they are tying to rebuild Wahnfried like it was." "Friedelind on the idyll:" "...forus whowereborn  into this confusing world of ancestors and traditions  Wahnfried was like an old enchanted fairy-rate." "Friedelind Wagner, daughter of Winifred Wagner, in "Night over Bayreuth"" "These are pictures of the time when when my children started their enthusiasm for the festival." "You couldn't get them away from the stage, mostly the four of them sat in the prompter's box." "And once they were kicked out of that they could be found backstage sitting on some piano." "Their whole exitement consisted in imitating the things they saw up on the stage." "Here is Wieland, posing as Wotan." "Some nice photos of my husband." "Wherever I was photographed, I was always carrying a book." "Charming pictures of the children and my husband." "Again Wieland and below Friedelind as Rhine maiden." "Here he's Siegfried." "My son Wolfgang, my daughter Friedelind, my daughter Verena." "Here Friedelind too, in full costume." "Here so to speak the "Ring" was being performed." "Photos of my mother-in-law in 1925;" "she was then 88." "That is the invalid, Chamberlain, I mentioned that he was ill and bedridden the final years of his life." "Houston Stewart Chamberlain, one of Hitler's mentors:" "Anyone who maintains that Jesus was a Jew is either a fool or a liar." ""The Foundations of the 19th Century"" "That's our first car, 1924, a Horch." "No, that's not true, our first car was a Presto." "This is that strange car." "I was the first woman in Bayreuth to get a driving licence." "From 1924 on I was also my husband's chauffeur." "I suggested him to buy a car." "He said : "Out of the question - always having to be driven by a chauffeur, and always having to consider him, not being able to speak freely in the car."" "Then I said I'd do it, and he immediately agreed." "So I have my licence since '24, I still drive my car today." "I just arrived from Salzburg and Lake Constance and I thoroughly enjoy it." "After the Presto we had a Horch, a nine-seater." "That was a police car, but the family alone consisted of six persons." "and if we wanted to take others with us, it was necessary." "We then switched to Mercedes;" "now I'm modest again, I've got a Volkswagen." "Again family history, let's take Isolde:" "There are no pictures of Isolde in here:" "Annoyed at her favourite daughter, her name was never to be mentioned in Wahnfried again until Cosima's death." "Let's take Daniela:" "After a row with Winifred she never set foot in Wahnfried again." "I'm having an absence, to think." "The years of the inflation after the war were much more difficult for us than the actual war years." "We got quite well through the war years." "But the years of the inflation were simply terrible." "Inflation mounted from millions into billions, from billions into trillions." "It was impossible to make an estimate for the reopening of the festival, as the money was daily losing its value, finally down to trillions." "Siegfried was urged from all sides to reopen the festival." "But he rightly said that this was impossible without a stable currency." "So we had to postpone the reopening until the stabilization of the Mark currency had been declared." "That took place in the autumn of 1923." "Siegfried immediately decided to hold the festival in 1924." "But not a penny was left, all the money had been lost in the inflation." "I already told you how the outbreak of the war suddenly interrupted the festival, and that we had to refund all the money because we didn't have any force majeure contract clause etc." "He therefore decided to make a concert tour in America." "This lasted from January to March 1924." "1924: difficulties after the war and the inflation Siegfried's American tour as conductor Winifred gives lectures, 30.000 marks earnings, subscriptions for 1000 marks, no new staging for 1924" "New stagings or anything like that was out of the question." "He had the courage to put on the "Meistersinger" production of 1911/12 with more or less with the same singers, and repeat that in 1924." "He also put on "Parsifal" and the "Ring" but all in the pre-war sets." "That was a beginning." "Nevertheless it was gratefully welcomed by our public." "It was so to speak sold out." "Not like it is today, but still we were satisfied." "And from year to year the gainings increased." "When in 1930 Siegfried with his last great production of "Tannhäuser"" "had to end his work because of his sudden death, the financial situation in Bayreuth was secure again." "And under those orderly circumstances I took over the management of the festival, as he had decreed in his last will." "Siegfried had produced his final wonderful "Tannhäuser" with the help of a so called Tannhäuser donation." "For a "Tannhäuser" production is extremely expensive, the huge cast, ballet, chorus and so on." "That Tannhäuser donation was presented to him on his 60th birthday ;" "it amounted to 100.000 marks." "This was a substantial sum at that time." "It enabled him to realize his Tannhäuser, his swan-song." "When he suddenly died on 4th of August 1930 of a heart attack," "I accepted this inheritance with greatest fears." "Right after his death I went back to the festival house." "For the last 18 days I had been at his bedside in the hospital." "I then tried to bring the festival to an end just as he had planned." "And thanks to the loyalty of all the staff, I succeeded." "For 1931 I planned only one repetiton of the production of 1930." "Because I first of all had to see how I could continue to carry on at all." "From the start I refused to take over the artistic direction," "I didn't think I was qualified for that, although Siegfried somehow thought I was capable of it." "I had always attended all the rehearsals and performances, all the singers' auditions and so on." "This had taught me a great deal." "I always sat next to Siegfried at rehearsals." "He had a very weak voice." "Mine wasn't as hoarse as it sounds today, I have a cold too at the moment." "Because there were no amplifiers at the time I had to pass on his orders from the auditorium to the stage." "There I won for myself the nickname of "soprano trombone"." "He called me his "soprano trombone"." "In spite of my thorough knowledge of the festival, its artistic demands," "I did not trust myself to take over as stage director on my own." "And after 1930 I thought very carefully whom to engage as artistic advisor or director." "And again and again I thought of the General Director of the Berlin State Theatres, Heinz Tietjen." "Winifred Wagner:" "My time:" "Furtwängler, Preetorius, Sabata, Tietjen" "Tietjen had suggested to me for 1931 to try out Furtwängler for Bayreuth." "And since Toscanini whom my husband had engaged as Tannhäuser and Tristan conductor in 1930 didn't want to conduct "Tristan" anymore," "Furtwängler took over Tristan in 1931." "Otherwise everything stayed just the same, as it was in the year of my husband's death, 1930." "Tietjen listened to the singers, had a look at our working methods here in Bayreuth." "And then he, since the festival had a pause year in 1932, we used to hold the festival for two years, followed by a pause year, we could make new plans for 1933." "Tietjen had suggested that we form a sort of triangle." "At the base of the triangle Tietjen and Furtwängler, at the top of the triangle, myself." "And I confess, these two gentlemen, invested with absolute authority, submitted to my wishes in a touching manner." "We proceeded like this:" "Whenever the two didn't agree, my decision was to be accepted by both." "So a very strange but great working method." "And if I may say, we were successful with it." "From 1933 onwards we so-to-speak reorganized Bayreuth." "We started new productions." "Siegfried wasn't a revolutionay but rather evolutionary." "For instance, he had staged a complete new production of the Ring but only in parts, so that all of a sudden one day you had a completely new Ring." "But in 1933 we made a completely new "Ring"." "On Tietjen's recommendation I engaged the world-famous stage designer Emil Preetorius, for all four parts." "This working team, Tietjen, Preetorius, Furtwängler, stood the test very well." "Tietjen's position of authority in the German theatrical scene enabled him to get any singer or conductor he wanted." "When in 1933 Toscanini, for purely political reasons, cancelled his engagement to conduct "Parsifal"," "Tietjen suggested that I should go to Richard Strauss and ask him to take over "Parsifal"." "That was very difficult for me." "After all Strauss was a great man." "And Toscanini had cancelled his "Parsifal" engagement as late as June 1933." "So Strauss would be made to feel like a makeshift." "I drover over to see him." "I was received very kindy." "He agreed straightaway to come to Bayreuth and conduct "Parsifal"." "But I have to say, he didn't do it just for Bayreuth's sake, although he repeatedly professed his loyalty to Richard Wagner, but also for Tietjen's sake, who had done so much for performing his works in Berlin." "Postscript" "1930 was for Bayreuth and our family a very tragic and difficult year." "On the 1st of April 1930 my mother-in-law died at the age of 93." "Her death occurred during my husband's absence." "Both of us were in Milan where he conducted the "Ring" at La Scala in Italian." "After that, we had planned a trip to Greece." "My husband had longed all his life to see Greece." "At last this dream was about to be fulfilled." "Then came the alarming news arrived in Milan that my mother-in-law was gravely ill and that we should return home." "We then drove back from Milan, across Switzerland where I had left my car, we returned immediately to Bayreuth, but we no longer saw Mama alive." "She lay in state in the great salon and looked quite beautiful." "The funeral service was held in the great salon too." "My husband was so deathly pale and in such a nervous state that I was afraid at the time that he would not be able to last out the ceremony." "He then went on with the preparations for the 1930 festival." "During a Götterdämmerung dress rehearsal in the second act, Siegfried's death, you know, he had a heart attack." "And then he lay for 18 days in the municipal hospital." "He couldn't be saved." "And as I said, he died on 4th of August 1930." "I am absolutely convinced that his mother's death had made such an impact on him that his already bad heart condition got much worse." "My duty after his death was a rather ambiguous one." "First, I was a mother, second, I had to run the household and represent the family, and third, I had the so-called management of the festival, a job I shared however with Tietjen and Furtwängler." "I solved the situation at home like this:" "For my children who went to a gymnasium by then, I engaged a young lady as a tutor." "She had graduated in the humanistic gymnasium and had had very good piano lessons for 10 years." "Liselotte Schmidt, I engaged her for the children, as a tutor." "She was also a very skilfull little Hausfrau." "And I could leave the household chores to her." "If for instance I rang her up from the festival house and told her we'd be 12 for lunch instead of 6, she was able to handle this without any difficulty." "The old nanny Emma looked after the children's physical welfare without fault." "Naturally I continued representing the family socially." "And I drove to the festival house each morning at 8 a.m." "and often I didn't get home till 4 a.m., particularly during the "Parsifal" rehearsals with Roller, the sets took ages to be build and set up." "That "Parsifal" caused us many a headache." "So I had to do a sort of tightrope act among all that and it went very well." "[reel change, bits missing]" "[For 1933] a new "Parsifal" was planned." "Planned less for artistic than for technical reasons." "The old scenery of 1882 had become so dilapidated that the technical director Friedrich Kranich declared that he couldn't guarantee anymore that the sets were safe, that they wouldn't tumble, that the backdrop wouldn't tear." "So we decided on a new Parsifal production in 1933." "This thoroughly shocked my sisters-in-law." ""How could I destroy sets on which the the Master's eyes had rested!"" ""How could I destroy them, stop using them!" etc. etc." "They organized a big petition to leave the "Parsifal" untouched." "They wanted only to reconstuct if possibly, but on no account a new production." "Tietjen and I shared the view that if we had asked Wagner what to do ... he would never have approved of using the old sets again, but that he would absolutely have been in favour of something new." "And that's what we decided to do." "Now, in 1933, Hitler had come to power." "He was known to be a great and devoted admirer of Richard Wagner and thus of Bayreuth." "My sisters-in-law forwarded the petition to Hitler." "And I witnessed a scene with him in the Reich Chancellery." "He went into a violent rage about this petition." "He said they must be out of their minds that it was sheer madness, the absurtity of it, as if Wagner in 1933 would have shown a production from 1882." ""Out of the question!" "Make a new production!"" "Then he came to me, in a very modest and timid way, with a wish:" "He said to me: "Couldn't you entrust the Parsifal production to Alfred Roller?"" "Of course, he had known and appreciated Alfred Roller during his Vienna years as a stage designer at the Vienna Court Opera." "And Tietjen too was of course enthusiastic about Roller." "I was enchanted by everything of his work I had seen, especially his Rosenkavalier." "When I came back from Reich Chancellery to Bayreuth I talked the idea of engaging Alfred Roller over with Tietjen." "He said : "Splendid, we'll do it."" "Did a new particular Wagner style come to Bayreuth with Hitler?" "1933 was a year of change." "Did this in any way reflect on the productions?" "Did he express any wishes?" "No, he never interfered with anything." "Not at all." "Shall I continue?" "Well, I just spoke about Roller's illness." "By the way, I made a mistake." "Roller did not make the new production in 1933, but in 1934." "Roller was a sick man at that time." "He could only keep himself alive with alcohol, and he was no longer really fit to work." "At first, Tietjen and I were not at all satisfied with his "Parsifal"." "His first set, the sacred lake, was very beautiful." "We did not really like the temple." "The flower garden was just an awful heap of roses and sculpted flowers." "Anyway, we didn't want to keep that for Bayreuth." "All our worries were about how would Hitler react, since he admired Roller above all." "Would he share our view?" "And I am glad to say that he shared our opinion, that he joined our point of view, that the Roller production was inadequate, as hard as the decision must have been for him." "He had no objection to our appointing a new set designer." "And that was my eldest son Wieland who had already designed the Meistersinger sets a few years ago." "And until 1945, Wieland's "Parsifal" was kept." "In the early days, we simply didn't discuss so much." "You know, in the old times we had far less problems here." "Eveything went much more smoothly." "There wasn't so much discussion." "What Wagner had ordered, that was obeyed." "Today a work of art is dissected." "We took and accepted the work of art as it was." "And we didn't ty to read into it socio-political or contemporary problems and the like." "That was unheard of then, that wasn't done." "This has only started now, since the Second World War, that everyone has an intellectual approach to things." "One tries to read this into it, and another that, and a third another." "We didn't have those problems." "In 1935, Walter Benjamin wrote, two years after his emigration:" ""Thus Fascism aestheticizes politics."" ""And Communism answers with the politicising of art." Walter Benjamin, he committed suicide out of fear of the Nazis" "Toscanini wrote in 1931:" ""..." "I must stress that I never mix art and politics,"" ""which don't interest me at all, neither in my own country, nor in any other..."" "Nor did the sisters-in-law agree with the appointment of Tietjen." "They said I had brought "Black Alberich" into the house." "The sisters-in-law were always in opposition against me." "Of course, they were furious that Siegfried had appointed me his successor." "But those are things which I too had to ..." "I mean ..." "Then they went to Salzburg, following Toscanini." "He conducted the Meistersinger there." "Toscanini is to blame that Salzburg started to include Wagner in its festival." "He left in a rage at the time." "He said he wouldn't conduct any more in three countries because they had authoritarian regimes:" "Italy, Germany and Russia." "Then he went first to Salzburg and conducted the Meistersinger there." "After Austria was incorporated, he went to Lucerne." "And he became the founder of the Lucerne Festival." "But all this doesn't concern me, it has nothing to do with Bayreuth... hasn't it." "Why is that guy letting his camera run all the time?" "Lets stop for today." "Yes." "That's fine." "We've done a good workload so far." "Now I don't know what to say." "I'll have to think it over." "I suggest we catch up tomorrow chronologically" "Hitler after '23" "We left that out because that should be told in one block." "We've now treated all the artistic aspects." "There was really very little friction." "You can't expect me to tell here that Wieland did intrigue against us all the time." "You can't expect me to tell such a thing, I'm his mother." "Because that's what he did." "He stood on the stage and all the time he criticized everything that Preetorius and Tietjen did." "Naturally this annoyed me." "But I overlooked it." "That's the difference between the generations, Gottfried." "You don't agree with everything your father does either." "You too would do some things differently, wouldn't you." "That's simply an established fact." "That's my opinion." "I don't take it at all so tragic." "Nor does Wolfgang think it's tragic that you opposed him on several issues." "He doesn't think it's tragic, he says it's perfectly natural." "But Wieland practised his opposition in a disagreeable way." "But you must understand that I don't want to mention that." "One couldn't possibly." "Now it's time we stopped, really!" "3. day" "When Adolf Hitler was enlarging the Berghof on the Obersalzberg, the Wagners sent him from Bayreuth linen and porcellain." "This too belongs to the history of Wahnfried." "Private lives and home stories seen as part of cultural and intellectual history" "The great chapter:" "the banality of evil and sometimes also the evil side of banality." "Strauss and Toscanini enjoyed very much being here." "One day Adolf Hitler came here as a visitor." "He looked at the rooms with great delight." "He said : "Since I've seen this house," "I don't care about the Obersalzberg any more."" "I knew him fairly well by then - that was in 1936." "I said: "I suppose you'd like to live here permanently?"" "He said: "That would be marvellous."" "And from 1936 until the end of the War he stayed in this house every time he visited Bayreuth during the festival." "Occasionally he came to the festival twice;" "at the beginning, and mostly again at the end for the "Götterdämmerung"." "Then he used to live in this house." "I proceeded like this:" "I put the entire house at his disposal." "His majordomo Kannenberg was given an inventory." "Hitler brought all his domestic staff with him." "The house was so to speak handed over to him during that period." "He insisted, however, that at least one member of the family, possibly more, took a meal with him there daily." "I usually chose lunch since I had all sorts of duties after the performances, and it became too much for me, they sat and talked until 4 a.m." "But occasionally I would also come here after the performances." "Then we used to discuss the performance in detail." "About the things he liked and disliked." "But mostly he liked it." "The great interest of the public seems always to concentrate on our relationship to Hitler." "Friedelind W.: "A young man jumped out of the car, dressed in short leather trousers, thick woolen socks, he had a starved look."" "1923 We met him in 1923." "He had been making a speech here at a so called "German Day"." "Neither my husband nor I went to this meeting." "But we were asked whether we would like to meet him after his speech, in the Hotel Anker here in Bayreuth." "My husband didn't go but I went." "I met him through the Bechsteins." "And I must confess, that man left at once a very deep impression, his personality, his eyes were extraordinarily compelling, very blue, large and expressive." "I invited him to visit us at Wahnfried because he was very much interested in Wagner's home and grave." "He wanted to see that." "I said: "Come and visit us tomorrow."" ""But I have another appointment tomorrow", in Berlin or somewhere." ""Why don't you come to breakfast?"" "So he turned up on the next day ;" "that was in 1923." "My husband showed him round the Wahnfried rooms, the library and the hall with Wagner's old Steinway piano." "We let him go alone to Richard Wagner's grave." "My husband and I stayed behind in the hall." "When he came back from the grave, he said to my husband:" ""lf I ever have any influence on affairs," ""I'll ensure that "Parsifal" will be returned to Bayreuth."" "Wagner's wish to have "Parsifal" performed only in Bayreuth was to be fulfilled." "When the time came and when he discussed these matters with me after my husband's death, after 1933," "I was the one who was against bringing "Parsifal" back to Bayreuth." "For the obvious reason, that he could, of course, have forbidden a Parsifal performance within Germany, but there was nothing he could do about our neighbouring countries." "The West Germans could travel to Brussels or Paris." "The South Germans to Basle and Vienna." "In short, it would have been an illusion, and he finally admitted that." "Hitler on Wagner:" ""I'll build myself a religion out of Parsifal."" ""The works of the Master encompass everything that National Socialsm stands for."" "and a quotation from Rauschning, from his talks with Hitler:" ""Hitler didn't recognize any models, with one exception:" "Richard Wagner."" "I would like to stress that it was Hitler's wish to be allowed to come to Wahnfried." "He had a deep reverence and, I dare say, even love for Richard Wagner." "This dated from his years in Linz." "When he watched as a young man from the gallery of the theatre in Linz "Lohengrin" and "Rienzi" with such enthusiasm, or rather, listened to it." "From then on he became a Wagner addict." "During his time in Vienna he virtually attended every Wagner performance from the upper gallery of the State Opera." "He came to us as a completely non-political young man who was a Wagner enthusiast." "Young?" "At that time he was 35 or 36 years old." "He had hoped to attend the re-opening of the festival in 1924." "But the Munich putsch intervened, and he was confined in the so-called fortress at Landsberg." "He was prematurely released at Christmas 1924, as far as I can remember." "So, in 1925 he came to Bayreuth for the first time as a guest." "As the guest of Edwin Bechstein and his wife." "On this occasion I showed him round the entire festival house." "It interested him vey much to see how everything was constructed, the stage, the audience, the acoustics, the viewing conditions." "I spent an entire morning to show him around the festival house." "Even at that time we were severely attacked because of Hitler's visit to the festival." "Therefore he told us that he wanted to spare us such annoyances and attacks, and would only return Bayreuth when he was in a position to help the festival, and not to harm it." "And he kept his word." "As hard as it must have been for him, he did not return until 1933 to Bayreuth any more, not to the festival any more." "In 1933 he came as the Führer, as he was called, of the German Empire, he came here." "He was of course received with all the honours ..." "due to a German - how shall I put it - ... a GermanFührer." "He forbade any demonstration for his person inside the festival house." "Leaflets were handed out to visitors where he asked to refrain from any homages to his person, that homages in this house could only be paid to the great master Richard Wagner." "And this was adhered to until the end." "Later at the so-called de-nazification tribunal I was accused of having been a beneficiay of the Third Reich." "They accused me of having received large sums of money from Hitler in order to continue the festival." "The fact is that for every new production he transferred 50.000 marks to me from his private account." "Any expert knows that even at that time you couldn't raise a new production for 50.000 marks, certainly not within the scale of Bayreuth." "That it had only been a contribution, a support." "Otherwise he never sent any money to us." "It was alleged that he had given money for extensions to this house." "I never got a penny from him." "He was my guest here only from 1936 on." "ln 1933, 1934, 1936 -1935 was again a pause year - he stayed in a private house here in Bayreuth in the Parkstr., like most of the other Bayreuth visitors, since there weren't sufficient hotel rooms in Bayreuth." "I have also been accused of putting the festival at the service of National Socialism." "This is of course utter nonsense." "We performed our operas at Bayreuth on purely artistic lines." "Occasionally we did allow ourselves a little joke." "I remember, in Act 2 of "Götterdämmerung" in the men's chorus we imitated some of the prominent people of the time," "For instance, we had a Goebbels and a Göring." "But that was our own personal joke." "Nobody noticed it at the time." "Hitler, once during each festival season, invited all the artists to this house." "He couldn't have done that before 1936 in his private quarters." "But these rooms here suited him fine." "In the beginning, Jewish members or Jewish spouses were also invited without any questions asked." "They also came of their own accord and out of curiosity." "I had a certain amount of difficulty with the Reich Theatre Board, who absolutely wanted to get me as a member." "I appealed to Hitler and told him that the regulations of the Reich Theatre Board could not be applied to Bayreuth." "He readily agreed to this." "So I was able to refuse Goebbels's request with no harm to myself." "The Reich Theatre Board of course had forbidden any participation of foreign or Jewish artists." "Until the final emigration of all these members from Germany I could still employ them." "And they came here too." "With the outbreak of the war in 1939 we were faced again with an important question." "Hitler asked me, "What are we going to do about the festival?"" "I said, "Close it down of course, as in 1914."" ""Yes, yes", he said, "but that will mean a break with tradition, the tradition will be lost ..." ""... alltheequipmentandinstallations will suffer as they did between 1914 and 1924 ..." ""all the lightings and so on" ""We must find a way of continuing the festival."" "I told him that it was out of the question." "Most of our members had been called up." "We don't have only soloists, we also have the technical stall, the chorus, workmen, dressers and so on" "They've all been called up, I can't get them, it's impossible, we have to shut down during the war." "He said: "I'll think the matter over."" "And in September 1939 he rang me up." "He said: "I think I've found a solution."" ""lf I exempt all members of the year 1939 ..." "... frommilitayserviceforthe period May to August..." "so that you have all our crew at your disposition," "... wouldyoubeable  to perform ?"" "I said, "I could perform alright ..." "... butIcannotperformbeforeanemptyhouse."" "Because I won't get the public either." "Everywhere wives are standing in for their husbands, in agriculture, they've taken over their husbands' professions, are continuing to run businesses and factories." "I said: "I can't count on attracting a public."" ""I see, he said, I can't make a speech before an empty Reichstag either."" "He took the point." "So he said, alright, I'll think that over too." "[reel change]" "" Kraft durch Freude " (Strength through Joy) Leiter Laffrenz, later WW's son-in-law after marrying her daughter Verena" "I'll talk again about what the public was composed of during the so-called War Festivals." "They've been contemptuously been called "KdF Festivals"." "They had nothing whatever to do with "Strength through Joy"." "The public was made up of seriously wounded soldiers, holders of the Knight's Cross and the Iron Cross, in fact, brave soldiers and officers who had distinguished themselves." "Also officers of the medical corps and large numbers of medical orderlies and nurses." "So many cripples came here that they had to bring their nurses with them to be able to move." "Later male and female workers who had been working non-stop in the the munitions factories, who had suffered from air raids or other frightening experiences." "They were brought here too." "They were selected as follows:" "The militay hospital doctor or the company commanders selected the eligible persons who might possibly be suitable as guest in Bayreuth." "They they were asked if they wanted to come." "It wasn't simply a delegation of uninterested people." "They were people who really were Wagner enthusiasts and hence interested in "Bayreuth", I'm putting Bayreuth in quotation marks here." "Even today, vistors of those days still write me glowing letters saying how wonderful it was then, and what impressions they'd carried with them from the performances." "Some of them write me that they're now able to buy the tickets themselves for Bayreuth." "Others who are not so well off still ask me today for free tickets for the festival." "One can see that these people weren't a mixed bunch, but were real enthusiasts who also deserved the invitation as a recognition of their effort during the War." "The transport arrangements for this crowd to Bayreuth, - after all 1500 people per performance - that was delegated to the organisation KdF - "Strength through Joy"." "That is the reason for the misunderstanding of the so called KdF Festivals." "We called them just "war festivals"." "This organistation used special trains to bring the people here, from all over Germany and also from the front." "The BdM girls were detailed from their factories and camps to cook for these people, up in the kitchen of the so-called restaurant of the festival house, and look after them." "They were met at the station by local party members and allocated to their quarters." "Naturally everything was free." "Meals were taken together in large halls in town or in the festival house restaurant." "At any rate the German Girls' Association" " bdm - saw to this." "At that time enthusiastic groups in traditional costumes used to come from the Sudeten province, not to visit the festival, but to catch a glimpse of the Führer up at the festival house." "There was always a tremendous turmoil up there." "Richard Wagner:" "Art and the Revolution "the public should have free admission to theatre performances."" "and further down "Thus art and its institutions could become the forerunners and patterns for all future communal institutions."" "Thank God we hardly had any air raid warnings." "Slit trenches had been dug everywhere up in the park." "But we went into them only once." "The performances began quite early in the afternoon so that during the evening air raids the festival wasn't really in danger." "The fact that the festival house only seated about 1500-1700 people always bothered Hitler." "He was enthusiastic about the idea of building a new festival house." "Since I knew him quite well, I knew that at first, one had to join him in his project, in order not to fall back into opposition at once and then achieve the opposite of what one really wanted." "That's why I first went along with him." "Hitler with the VW-architect Mewis planned a huge new festival house to seat thousands." "Wolf" "How did you talk to Hitler?" "How did you or the children call him?" "That's a story we don't tell." "We said "Du" to each other." "I couldn't possibly admit that in public." "I called him Wolf and he called me Wini, we were on "Du" terms." "The children also said "Du" to him, they called him "Wolf"." "I might admit that the children said "Du" to him." "But I don't want to divulge these purely personal things to the public." "Wasn't your son Wolfgang angry because he too was called Wolf?" "No, no." "No, I think at that time we called him Wolfgang, I don't know." "He has only been called Wolf since he joined the directorate of the festival." "The children were completely free and easy with this man." "He was always deliriously happy when he was with the children." "That I can tell." "He used to come here privately from time to time and in the evenings went up to the children already in their beds." "I could tell that." "Officially, at the festival house, he kissed my hand and addressed me as "Madame"." "We used to laugh about all the fuss." ""The good uncle with the pistol in his pocket."" "Thus Friedelind Wagner describes Hitler when he came up to the children in bed, often in the evenings, in the 1920s." "The new building plans for the festival cost me hours of discussion with Hitler." "These talks took place either in the garden, walking up and down, or if the weather wasn't good enough, here in this room at the fire-place." "I didn't matter how warm it was, the fire had to be lit." "He sat next to it and spent hours poking it." "That was a lot of fun for him." "Our talks mostly lasted till four in the morning." "He didn't come only for the festival to Bayreuth, but dropped in on his journeys between Munich and Berlin," "He used every opportunity to get in touch with us." "He would then spend the night in Berneck in the Hotel Bube, and he used to come here after dark, because he didn't want to attract attention, crowd gatherings, he didn't want us to have any trouble." "So he mostly arrived here after dark." "We used live at Wahnfried at the time, we received him in the hall." "Mostly he came here all alone, very often I fetched him myself." "I sat at the wheel and he next to me which he found very strange at the beginning." "Because, whenever he saw a woman at the wheel, he always used to shout:" ""Look out, woman driver!"" "That's what he always shouted to his chauffeur." "But in order to get here unnoticed, he actually sat down next to me in the car." "He even found some words of praise for my driving abilities." "Actually he only came here to see the children." "He enjoyed the children a lot." "Usually they were already in bed." "He then went up to their bedroom, at the time all four shared one bedroom." "Wieland used to be the one who was still awake." "Wieland and Friedelind," "The little ones, Wolfgang and Verena, were often asleep." "But they looked upon him as a good uncle." "In fact that's how he behaved with us here." "He was very touching with the children, gave in to all their whims." "He often took the children with him in his Mercedes with compressor - it made a hellish noise when it was switched on and they drove uphill," "The children simply loved it, he did that several times for them." "He actually came here to - I'd almost say - to enjoy family life." "He didn't have this anywhere else, no cozy home of his own." "Later he furnished a little flat for himself on the Prinzregenten-Platz in Munich, and took in his niece Geli." "But at that time he had no one in whom he could confide." "We never talked about politics at home." "At the de-nazification tribunal they again and again accused me of having advocated Hitler's policy." "That always astonished me, I said "what's this got to do with politics?"" "And at the tribunal's court hearing they thought I was just crazy, because I did not equate Hitler and politics." "For us, there was never any question of this." "The bond between us was a purely personal and private and confidential one, based on the reverence and the love for Richard Wagner." "He cherished my son Wieland above all." "Basically only because he had Wagner's blood in his veins." "Wieland as the eldest was of course intellectually the most mature." "And this love and reverence which he now transferred from Wagner to his family, and foremost, to Wieland, this led to Wieland being exempt from getting drafted at the outbreak of the war." "He did his military service, although for only for one year instead of the usual two." "He wanted Wieland to familiarize himself with the festival work." "He had already designed the sets for the Meistersinger and Parsifal, even during his military service." "After 2 p.m. he was allowed time off for this purpose, by special order from Hitler." "Wolf, Wolfsburg, Wolfsschanze, Wolf-Rüdiger Hess, Wolf-Siegfried Wagner, Werwolf..." "Wielands son was baptized Wolf-Siegfried, called Wummi today." "What was Hitler to you, to the family?" "A good friend ..." "whom we were always glad to see, whom we liked to have as a guest etc." "For us he was not the Führer, he was simply..." "how shall I put it..." "a fascinating and interesting person." "And that he certainly was." "What did you find so fascinating about him?" "There must have been repellent things too..." "But I never found anything repellent about him at all." "That's just what's so strange, he had this absolute Austrian tactfulness of heart and warmth." "After all, I knew him from 1923 to 1945, 22 years in all." "In those 22 years he never caused me any disappointment." "Apart from what happened outside, but that did not affect me." "For me he was always just the Hitler who came to Bayreuth as a Wagner fan and friend of the family." "A quotation of the psychoanalist Erich Fromm, in "Anatomy of Human Destruction"" ""But even the most evil person is a human being..."" "and he contiues: "Any analysis which deprives him of his human qualities would only make us blind..."" "For instance, Landsberg, weren't you in contact with him, didn't you at the time ..." "Oh well, for Christmas I ... in 1924 I think," "The putsch was in 1923, in November, so in 1924 he was released." "For Christmas, I collected money for him." "The local national socialists brought their Christmas gifts here." "I packed them into boxes and sent them to the head of the Landsberg prison, he was a very decent and human man, I don't know his name," "I sent him the stuff and aked him to distribute it, and that's what he did." "I asked what he needed, he said he urgently needed writing paper." "So I sent him heaps of writing paper." "And now I'm accused of having supplied the paper for "Mein Kampf"!" "In other words, I'm indirectly to blame that "Mein Kampf" has been written." "No matter what I did, I was always attacked." "Winifred Wagner:" "Sometimes he answered the phone:" ""This is Musical Director Wolf speaking."" "Didn't you feel the need sometimes you ought to do something, for the outside world?" "This is what I was going to tell you now." "As I was saying, until 1939 I knew of no serious cases where I had to intervene." "I was of course able to intervene on isolated cases on behalf of our Jewish members or people who were accused in connection with homosexuality," "I was able to arrange things." "Sometimes I got from him first a refusal and later his consent." "Take for instance our "Siegfried" [tenor] at the time, he's dead now so I won't hurt him anymore, our good [Max] Lorenz who was our principal Siegfried at the time," "and without whom I couldn't image Bayreuth at all." "So one day, after Lorenz had been publicly prosecuted, he said Lorenz had become totally unacceptable for Bayreuth." "I said, all right then, I'll shut Bayreuth down, because without Lorenz I cannot hold the festival." "So the outcome of the criminal case was ..." "it was held here in Bayreuth which was embarrassing for me too, as I was his employer." "One of our répétiteurs was also involved." "But the court hearing ended like this:" "Hitler rang me up one day and said:" "Everything's all right, Lorenz can go on singing." "I was able to smooth these things over between 1933 and 1939, and also made him tacitly tolerate Jewish spouses." "There were comparatively few cases until 1939." "After the outbreak of the war a lot of people were put into concentration camps." "I received an enormous amount of petitions." "Those which seemed to me more or less credible and also worthy of help" "I always passed on." "And I never acctually got a single refusal." "Only in the case of the 20th July [1944], what was the name of that woman again?" "... FrauvonThaddencame tome in person." "She had been involved with the 20th ofJuly and had to fear for her life." "Frau von Thadden is the only case where I didn't succeed in getting someone's release." "But otherwise, I forwarded all petitions I received." "Significantly, in 1943 Hitler told me not to pass the petitions on to Bormann any more, but to his physician Dr. Brand." "He had obviously noticed that Bormann had suppressed certain petitions." "Anything that didn't suit him wasn't passed on." "So I was instructed to forward the petitions through Dr. Brandt to Hitler." "I looked upon these supporting efforts as a matter of course." "At my de-nazification tribunal many of those who had been released through my intercession spoke up on my behalf." "Strangely enough most of them were physically handicapped." "The tribunal never failed to be astonished that I always placed chairs fo those people while they were being interrogated." "They were callously left standing." "American war correspondents also attended." "One day Klaus Mann appeared in American uniform with Herr..." "Klaus Mann and Curt Riess on Winifred Wagner" "Curt Riess accompanied by Curt Riess, also in American uniform." "They came to interview me." "I deliberately spoke English with the alleged Americans, since I was born an Englishwoman." "Curt Riess only sat there and didn't utter a word." "Whereas Klaus Mann incessantly asked me this and that." "He asked me to speak in German, "why English?"." "I said: "You're an American war correspondent," ""I'm English by birth, I don't see why we should speak German."" "Actually his English was bad and he was embarrassed to speak English with me." "Anyway, then we ... and while the camera was off during reel change, Winifred Wagner continues about Willy Brandt during his emigration in a foreign uniform, "I hold that against Willy Brandt too, that isn't done."" "To cut a long story short:" "Klaus Mann then wrote an article in the "Stars and Stripes", the American Army newspaper." "He remarked that he had travelled through the whole of Germany and had nowhere met a national socialist." "He had only managed, in a remote spot in the Fichtel Mountains to meet a woman who admitted that she was a national socialist." "And that woman was ..." "he made a few dots, then he wrote an Englishwoman." "It was the Germans who denied it and the Englishwoman professed her loyalty to it." "Winifred Wagner on the "noble National Socialism" as she calls it, until 1939" "You've admitted to be a National Socialist." "In your interpretation, what was National Socialism to you at the time?" "And why?" "Well, that's a terribly difficult question to answer." "You have to imagine the terrible misery the people were living through during the inflation, after the first World War." "People starved, froze and had no money, no food." "There had come such a depression over the whole of Germany..." "then came the extreme leftist Spartacus group from Kiel ..." "and then the Commissars' Republic in Munich ..." "all that was pure anarchy." "It goes without saying that people with a sense of German patriotism came together and demanded a leader." "When therefore this completely unknown Hitler appeared in Munich and delivered his really fiery speeches and promised us salvation, through a new national community, that people were only too ready to join him, for me that was really ..." "I became a party member relatively late." "Hitler asked me whether I was a member." "I said, what for ?" "He said it would be a good thing if I had an honourable membership number under 100.000." "Then I joined to please him." "I was not an early member at all." "But I was already enthusiastic about his ideas." "You mustn't forget, in our family we had a very strong consciousness of being German." "My husband was absolutely German-conscious, he found the defeat of 1918 unbearable." "He searched everwhere for contacts to people who were prepared to help build up Germany again." "Also, with Hitler the idea of a national community enthralled me." "This idea has never so alive as at the beginning of National Socialism." "This absolute community of the "workers with the fist" and the "workers with the brain"." "Until 1918 there had been an enormous gap between the manual workers and the intellectual workers." "Hitler's attempt to unite these two groups and bring them together into one community, that enthralled me too." "I thought his idea was great, taking the youths off the streets." "and to [organize them] in any form ..." "This led later to the founding of the Hitler Youth, the "Pimpfs" etc." "Perhaps he needn't have done it like that." "But the youths once again had an objective, had enthusiasm, was kept off the streets, were incited to practise sports, in a healthy kind of spirit." "Those are things which could win one over to National Socialism." "After all it succeeded at the time in tackling the unemployment." "The years 1933 - 1939 were very fruitful years for Germany." "The countries abroad had fully recognized Hitler and with him, National Socilalism." "The feelings of an Englishwoman by birth on the bombing of London?" "Very well, but then London and England were bombed, you were an Englishwoman, didn't this cause you any problems?" "Not really, no." "And frankly, during the war, I felt absolutely like a German." "I regretted the raids on England as much as Hitler did, the fact that it was necessary." "He never regretted anything as much as the war against England." "He would never have made war on England if the military had not been in favour of it." "Richard Wagner and the final solution of the Jewish question?" "Do you think that they, when looking at the final solution of the Jewish question, they were acting according to Richard Wagner's wishes?" "No, that's nonsense." "Wagner's idea was at the most a neutralization of the intellectual influence of the Jews on the political and cultural life of Germany etc., but he never thought of an extermination of the Jews." "Hitler, a curse for the family, the house and for Germany?" "Don't you think, today when you know so much more about it all, that Hitler wasn't after all a curse for Germany or the house of Wagner?" "Good gracious, it's impossible to answer that question, isn't it." "I will always think of him with gratitude, because here in Bayreuth he literally paved the way for me and helped me in every possible way." "All these later attacks against him and against us," "I consider them to be completely unjustified." "But you will admit today, that Hitler and National Socialism did considerable things against the Jews?" "Yes, of course, but in fact, he wasn't the initiator." "The ... howshallIputit?" "the main motivating force was Streicher in Nuremberg." "He was totally impossible;" "we all disapproved of him." "Hitler on the Jews, quoted by Fest:" "the year he met Winifred Wagner, 1923, at the Circus Krone" ""The Jew may be a race , but he isn't human." "The image of the devil, racial tuberculosis of the people, vampire of the nations, eternal leech."" "Wannsee, 1942: "The discovery of the Jewish virus is one of the greatest revolutions carried out in the world."" ""We can only recover our health by exterminating the Jew."" ""This is the task for a Cyclope, Napoleon is merely a conqueror, nor a world event."" ""If the Jew didn't exist we would have to invent him."" ""...for Judae is the world plague."" ""The lord of the opposite world."" ""We always carry the Jew inside us."" "And in "Mein Kampf":" ""I had changed from a feeble world citizen into a fanatic anti-semite."" "You would except Hitler there?" "I except Hitler from all of society." "Now Friedelind your daughter Friedelind" "End of 1. part" "Part 2" "Winifred Wagner and the history of the Wahnfried House from 1914 to 1975" "A word in between, by Adorno, for clarity:" ""Wagner's anti-semitism contains all the ingredients of what was to follow later."" "but: "Into the dark sphere of influence of Wagner's reactionism are engraved the letters in which his works triumphed over his character,"" ""over his character and over his times," I'd like to add." "In short:" "Richard Wagner's music has nothing to do with all this." "As Thomas Mann said:" ""not even in the sense of a misunderstanding"." "And still:" "National Socialism was Bayreuth's most challenging test." "It hit Bayreuth at the time of its greatest weakness, like it hit the German bourgeioisie, economically and intellectually and culturally." "Hitler became Richard Wagner's deadly enemy, through being near to him, an arrogated nearness, frivolous and impudent." "But provoked by Richard Wagner himself, this dangerously contemporary and politically sharp-sighted wanderer between the worlds and fire-player." "So, just a child who got burnt among the children and grandchildren of Bayreuth." "The chapter Friedelind or the Mouse" "Quite a stir at the time caused my daughter Friedelind's book "Night over Bayreuth"" "About the mother and daughter relationship I might say a few words now." "Friedelind has been a very Wagnerian child, right from the start, very strong-willed and self-confident." "She always wanted to play the major role." "In fact, I'm convinced, if I had been a sick or invalid woman, she would have been the most loving daughter and the most charming nurse one could imagine." "But I think she somehow she begrudged me the position I had gradually obtained for myself." "She always wanted to play the first fiddle, that is, when she was young." "She's come to her senses now and found her way back to me." "As a child she was extremely self-willed and obstinate." "And she always thought she was her father's favourite, and keeps referring to it in her book." "I think Friedelind got this idea from her aunts, my sisters-in-law." "They spoiled the child in every way, worshiped her, called her "May Queen"... and I don't know what else ..." "Obviously the child's head was turned." ""I hate to talk about the "mouse"." "How kind hearted she was, the following story will demonstrate:" "We had a Schnauzer bitch who was very weak after producing a larger litter, and was supposed to take cod-liver oil." "We tried everything in order to make the bitch take that cod-liver oil." "Friedelind in particular spent a lot of time with the animal." "One day she came to us and smilingly announced:" ""Striezi is taking the cod-liver oil now."" ""How did you manage that?"" ""Very simple, she said, I poured cod-liver oil over all the puppies and now the mother's licking the little ones clean."" "And thus the bitch was able to take the necessary cod-liver oil." "She was a merry child and quite a tomboy." "She was goal-keeper of a soccer team, consisting of my children's class mates." "The great lawns in front of Wahnfried were completely ruined by that football team of 22 players." "I had to have them re-turfed." "The whole football team would come for tea or coffee every afternoon." "It was great fun for all of us." "The only one in the family who opposed Hitler." "Renegate daugher or a political act?" "At the outbreak of war she happened to be in Triebschen near Lucerne where Wagner had found a sanctuay and where my husband was born." "The Swiss would invite members of the family every year." "The house was still furnished." "My sisters-in-law, Daniela and Eva, where both in Triebschen when war broke out." "Friedelind was visiting them at the time." "I tried to persuade her to return to Germany, since I could not send her any more money." "As long as she was in England or France I could only send her a 200 marks per month, that was the limit allowed, and after the war broke out, I couldn't send her anything at all." "I had imagined, very well, if she won't come on her own now, she will return one day when her money ran out." "But I was wrong." "Toscanini had deposited 10.000 Swiss francs for her, so that she was not classified as a foreigner without means in Switzerland." "That meant that she had money and could stay there." "It was very embarrassing for me to have a child staying abroad." "My youngest daughter, Verena, had reported to the Red Cross immediately." "She entered the service at once, and got as far as the Russo-Romanian border as anestesia nurse." "I felt Friedelind ought to do her duty to the fatherland too." "But she would have none of that." "The reason for this was her strong sense of justice." "She was the friend of several couples who were related through marriage with Jews." "She witnessed Frida Leider's separation from her husband Herr Deman." "He went to Switzerland and stayed there during the war, and Frida Leider was left in Berlin all alone." "Of course, she was very unhappy about this separation from her husband." "Friedelind saw tragedies like this happen in several families;" "married couples having to separate in order to save their lives." "That meant she started frequenting people who were anti-National Socialist and anti-Hitler." "At the outbreak of war she refused to come home and wrote to me:" ""You'll see where your Hitler will lead you all, into the abyss, disaster etc."" "Unfortunately she was right." "In March 1940, I tried to bring her home from Switzerland." "She said: "I'm sorry, but it's too late."" ""I've already made various other arrangements." ""I'll never take steps against you all." ""I'll always think of you all and remain in contact with you." ""But I can't come home now."" "So I went back to Germany, having achieved nothing." "Shortly afterwards I had a phone call from the Reich Chancellery, informing me that Friedelind had gone to England, passing through the unoccupied zone of France, brought over by a British Member of Parliament, and that she had started writing articles against Germany, Hitler, Mussolini etc. in England." "If we hadn't been members of the Wagner family, we'd all have been sent to a concentration camp." "That's obvious." "I mean, she was classified as a traitor." "Friedelind Wagner, quoting her mother on her last visit in Switzerland, in her book:" ""And if you don't obey, orders wilt be given to have you ... "" ""... annihilated and exterminated at the first opportunity." Friedeland Wagner: "Night over Bayreuth"" "Shortly after Friedelind's arrival in Buenos Aires, Toscanini arrived and conducted Beethoven's 9th there." "Rather cleverly my daughter applied to sing in chorus." "Toscanini discovered her at once and asked her "What are you doing here?" [bit missing] ... her fate." "And Toscanini immediately took her with him to North America, to New York." "She even stayed at his home at first." "She was completely penniless and needed money." "At that point someone must have persuaded her to write that book which she called "Night over Bayreuth"." "I suppose she told the whole thing to somebody orally, and then a ghost writer actually wrote the book." "She still must have had some decency or respect left - how shall I put it ... because after the book had been translated into German she decreed that it wasn't to be imported to Germany." "It was printed in Switzerland and she didn't want it to be published in Germany." "That book constituted of course the main indictment at my tribunal hearing." "For example, she claimed that I had tried to persuade her to return in order to have her sent to a concentration camp and such." "Which was a pack of lies." "Shortly after I visited her in the spring of 1940, I had letters from her in which she kindly thanked me for the visit and regretted that my visit had come too late to make her change in mind, etc." "I was able to present those letters of hers to the tribunal, they stated the opposite of what she had allowed somebody to write in her book." "She didn't back up any of it herself, which is shown by the telegram she sent to the tribunal, which thank God arrived just in time, asking them not to use any statements from her book against her mother." "This shows quite clearly what to think of that book, and how it came to be written." "In America Friedelind tried to found an opera company, and there were some other ventures, but she wasn't really successful." "She came home to Germany in 1952 for the festival." "But she always she returned to America - she had become an American citizen in the meantime." ""but since she has received her inheritance our relationship is absolutely normal."" "4. day continuing the Friedelind chapter" "We're ready for you." "As I said, Friedelind returned to Germany from America for the first time in 1952, during the festival." "She then attempted to resume the old family ties, and succeeded." "But she always remained a bit of a problem for us, as she needed some sort of occupation." "It wasn't possible to let participate in the Festival because of her ... how shall I put it, her excessive need to be independent." "But both my sons agreed to her idea of organising master classes during the Festival." "That way she had some occupation and distraction, and my sons didn't have to worry about her interfering in festival matters." "She organised the master classes, using mainly Americans." "She then engaged some people, mostly from the festival team, who taught the students in all kinds of opera-related subjects:" "costumes, wig-making, make-up, répétiteur work, singing etc." "It satisfied her and she came back every year to Bayreuth." "Hitler's daily routine at Wahnfried" "Hitler's daily routine here went like this:" "He regarded the week in Bayreuth as the only holiday he had all year." "He enjoyed being in Bayreuth and tried to fend off any upcoming duties while in Bayreuth." "This was the usual daily routine:" "He rarely got up before 11 or 12 o'clock, as he never went to bed earlier than 4 a.m." "Working at night was a habit from his days in Munich where he lived in the Kirchstr." "where the trams used to screech around the corners until long after midnight, so that he could only work in peace at night." "And he kept those nightly working hours during his lifetime." "And when he came to Bayreuth, we would have to entenain him until 4 a.m." "I wasn't up to it because I had my duties during the festival." "Usually my children would take over." "If the weather was fine, he would incessantly pace up and down in the garden, chatting with the children, if the weather was bad, he'd sit by the fireplace." "As I said, he got up at about 11, and at about 1 p.m. he probably had his lunch." "Just like in Berlin, he was joined at luch by the few members of this staff." "Permanent guests were ..." "Speer was very often here," "Goebbels and his wife, his adjutants, von Below and von Puttkamer and Wünsche." "As in Berlin, the household would be organised by Kannenberg and his wife." "Part of his staff was a cook for his special diet, as he was a strict vegetarian." "The one thing one could tempt him with were liver dumplings." "Hitler's favourite dish:" "Hoppelpoppel" "To come back to the staff he brought with him:" "He was accompanied by two valets at the most." "I already mentioned his personal adjutants." "Occasionally he would invite someone like Goebbels to Bayreuth." "He also asked Rosenberg." "Mainly in order to convince him that his criticism of the "Ring", expressed his "The myth of the 20th century" was totally wrong." "Hitler claimed that if one had seen the "Ring" only performed in Riga, one wasn't in a position to judge it, and that Rosenberg's judgement on the Ring in his "Myth" originated from that performance." "He invited Rosenberg here in order to make him appreciate the Ring "correctly"." "He also invited Göring and his wife." "I must tell you something which will probably cause today's listeners to smile:" "Hitler was naive enough to believe that the killing of the swan in Act 1 of "Parsifal" would cure Göring of his passion for hunting." "He said to Göring after the first act of Parsifal:" ""Will you ever be able to shoot down a poor helpless animal after seeing that act?"" "Of course it made no impression whatsoever on Göring." "I think I spoke last about his vegetarian food." "Hitler never drank alcohol, only fruit juice or water." "He led a very ascetic life." "Dinner would mostly last until the beginning of the performances." "As you know they start here at 4 p.m." "And shortly after 3.30 Hitler got into his car would then drive through town to the festival house." "All the streets , starting with the Richard-Wagner-Str, up to the festival house, were lined with people." "Not only the population of Bayreuth wanted to see him and pay him their respects." "Lots of folklore groups from Sudeten Province," "Youth groups, Hitler Youth and BdM [German Girls Groups] came from everywhere to see him here in Bayreuth, not only once but several times." "The entire drive from Wahnfried to the Festival House was in fact one big triumphal procession, accompanied by cheers." "He mostly stood up in the car." "I would greet him at the entrance of the Festival House, leading to the central box." "He always kissed my hand, much to the SA's disapproval, they thought it was wrong." "During the intervals he always visited the Festival House restaurant, at the time we still had the old festival restaurant." "It was a sort of wooden shed which had stood there since 1876 and served its purpose very well." "He always had his special table there." "His entourage, the people he had brought with him, would sit there, as well as representatives of various delegations who were here," "Gauleiters, high ranking SS-officers and members of the military." "Blomberg was once here for example." "He would have his tea among the rest of the audience, and it was the same during the second interval." "Anyone could come up to him." "Of course, it was quite difficult to get near him." "After the performance he would return to Wahnfried." "As I already said, here he would discuss the performance, his impressions, until 4 a.m." "Usually, from our family all the children were present," "Wieland in particular, he especially liked him." "I usually held out until midnight, then I had to retire." "Sometimes it couldn't be avoided and government or militay matters were discussed here." "On those occasions various delegations would arrive." "I remember one day, this room I'm sitting in now was out of bounds for me, because a model of the "Westwall" [Siegfried Line] was put up in here." "But I only heard about that much later." "Friedelind Wagner reports for instance:" "The wife of the singer Manovarda had a gold swastika bangle irremovably attached to her wrist at the spot where Hitler had kissed her hand." " the difficulties of ..." "How can one explain it today ..." "understand it today, well ..." "The effect of his personality was tremendous, his enemies claimed, even demonic." "But we also know the demonic in the Goethean sense." "When I refer to his demonic qualities, I mean it in the Goethean sense, not in the disparaging way it is used today." "People generally were far more easily enthusiastic than today." "I don't know of any youth movement today which is capable of total, fanatic enthusiasm." "and is able to ... how shall I put it ..." "express that enthusiasm, vocally, through gestures etc." "At that time the youth and the entire population were still capable of enthusiasm." "And somehow, this capacity for enthusiasm is still latent even today." "At the Festival for example:" "One doesn't cheer Hitler any more, one hardly cheers government representatives of today." "One greets them cordially, one applauds." "Only the Begum occasionally raises a cheer." "Obviously a personality who stands out from the masses, and who is also a charming and very beautiful woman." "So people are still ready to create ideals for themselves they can be enthusiastic about." "And that is ... this ... this intensity of enthusiasm was still there at that time, and it flowed towards Hitler wherever he went, wherever he showed himself." "On the Wahnfried grounds he was completely left in peace." "There were two guards at the gate, but the population of Bayreuth was very considerate." "They never gathered here or called out "Heil Hitler" to get him to show himself." "Here on my grounds he had absolute peace." "The storms of enthusiasm occured only during the drive through Bayreuth and up at the Festival House." "As I have mentioned, he rejected any form of adulation inside the house." "This was to be a place of reverence only for the genius of Richard Wagner." "This rule was strictly adhered to." "Chamberlain!" "As to the impression, the effects at the time," "As I already told you, I cannot describe the effect of Hitler's personality on myself." "I cannot find the right words." "But I can point out that my brother-in-law Houston Stewart Chamberlain, wrote him a beautiful letter after their first encounter." "I'll try to find the text somewhere." "After all, the man was a scholar, a sober Englishman." "Even he - though admittedly he adored everything German - even he was impressed by his personality." "He was able to put it into words, I can't." "But I hope I can find that letter and read it to you." "[reel change] it would offend against one of our best qualities, namely admiration, to admit that any form of materialization is involved..." "" ... nor even in the sense of caricature... " Thomas Mann on Wagner and Hitler." "About his musicality I can say this:" "As a young man he even attempted to compose an opera." "And he tackled it too." "Anyone can read about it in the book by Kubiczek, a friend of his youth, he was a musician himself." "He was just as self-confident in this as in many other matters." "Kubiczek often said to him:" ""You can't do it it like that, that transition is impossible."" "But Hitler knew better, "That's the way I'm doing it." he said." "That was absolutely typical of him." "But since he wanted to tackle the compositon of an opera, he must have had all the technical musical knowledge." "Otherwise he wouldn't have been able to do it." "He played the piano quite nicely." "Bechsteins put a piano at his disposition." "Götterdämmerung, Dollfuss and Lohengrin" "As Chancellor of the Reich he still found the time to go to the opera and he attened all of Furtwängler's concerts." "Even in times of crisis he would come to Bayreuth for a week, and usually he returned to Bayreuth again during the last week, after about four weeks." "Nobody would spare the time for something like that if he isn't really interested in music - in this case Richard Wagner." "The Götterdämmerung lasts, intervals included, about six hours." "It takes a lot of time." "The Dollfuss-incident occurred while he was here in Bayreuth." "It never make him cancel his visit and leave." "One particular incident shows how well he knew Wagner's works." "Tietjen and I had staged a new production of "Lohengrin" in 1936, sets by Preetorius." "And we decided, since Franz Völker sang the part of Lohengrin, he had a beautiful voice and seemed indefatigable, so we decided to use the so-called longer version of the Grail narration for once here in Bayreuth." "The longer Grail narration was left out at the premiere in Weimar, because the tenor at the time wasn't up to the long part." "And all the theatres took this as a sign that the cut must be preserved." "We felt we ought to do the uncut version for once, out of interest." "During the first performance I sat next to Hitler in the centre box." "When Völker continued after the usual end of the Grail narration with the so-called extension," "Hitler gave a start." "He looked at me and thought Völker had made a mistake." "I don't think more than ten people in the audience realized that this was the full length version of the Grail narration, that his was something totally new for them which perhaps they didn't notice." "But Hitler noticed immediately that this was something one hadn't heard before." "postscript about what you just told me" "During the reel change I have just asked myself what converted me to National Socialism, or what made me go on believing in it." "The conclusion I have reached is that my belief in N.S." "was solely linked with the personality of Adolf Hitler." "I wasn't particularly interested in anything else." "I was able to live at Wahnfried until 1945, through the war years." "The so-called guest house really was a guest house." "As I have said, Richard Strauss, Toscanini and Hitler stayed here." "During the war many things changed, our whole way of living." "I was fairly lonely and lived in the Wahnfried house, which was still intact." "Let me show you some pictures." "This is the front view of the house." "The view from the garden." "I'm a fan of creeping plants and I planted, maybe without permission, Virginia creepers at Wahnfried." "This is what it looks like in summer when the wild wine is in exuberant growth." "The entrance hall of Wahnfried with the grand piano donated by the Steinway company in 1874 when the house was first inhabited." "This grand piano is a historical item, Wagner played on it a lot, and particularly Franz Liszt." "The entrance hall gets its light from the top, it goes right up through all the floors of the house." "Theses are Kietz busts of Richard Wagner and Cosima Wagner." "On the right and left of each door of the room are busts by Zumbusch of the main characters from Wagner's works, Siegfried, Tannhäuser and so on." "Connecting to this hall in the south is the so-called great salon." "Here are family pictures." "Part of his libray, the volumes, to the right and left, exhibitions..." "And this must be a very early drawing." "The proportions of the room are correct." "But up here, in those, how do you call them the coats-of-arms are missing." "On this picture you can see the coats-of-arms." "Out of gratitude, Wagner put up the coats-of-arms of the towns which had Wagner associations at that time." "You can see, there isn't any wallpaper yet, so it must be a very early drawing." "But you can already see the built-in library and the books." "The paintings were hung in a different way later too." "Another sketch of the facade." "The sgraffito comes out beautifully, it hasn't survived very well in our climate." "Wotan's presentiments of Siegfried." "I don't really know the meaning, but the inscription can be read very well, written by Wagner" ""Here where my delusion [Wahn] found peace [Frieden], I call this house Wahnfried."" "He finished composing "Parsifal" in this room." "And then unfortunately it happened that on April 5, 1945 Wahnfried was destroyed in a British air raid." "This is a view, the facade survived." "But at the back, at least a third of the rooms were destroyed, among them the great salon I just showed you." "Here you can see the upper floors." "This is part of the great salon and the libray." "And another one, everything just destroyed and gone." "After the air raid on 5th April 1945 my stay in Wahnfried was over." "I think I already mentioned it, I moved to Oberwarmensteinach in the Fichtel mountains, with my son Wolfgang and his wife, who had her first child there on April 14th, 1945, without a doctor and by candlelight." "Exile:" "Oberwarmensteinach in the Fichtel mountains 1945" "On the same day, on April 14th, the Americans marched into Bayreuth." "They occupied Wahnfried immediately." "Wahnfried itself, of course, was uninhabitable, but the so-called guest house, today's Siegfried Wagner house, it had been occupied by three families of refugees," "They had to leave the house within 20 minutes." "The entire property was out of bounds for the family and for Germans." "The Americans settled down in this house I'm living in now, and stayed here for 12 years." "At first it was a kind of officers' quarters." "They put on entertainments for officers every evening." "They had young German girls of course whom they dressed up with the flower maidens costumes from the festival fundus." "They had dances here, young singers performed here." "But Germans were not allowed to enter by the front door." "They removed some bricks from the garden side of the wall and made a separate entrance for the Germans." "They were led downstairs into the cellar and there they had to change." "The cellar was in an awful state of disrepair at the time because we had our air-raid shelter below this house." "It was all propped up with wooden scaffolding etc." "So the girls who offered themselves for all this, who got cigarettes and drinks etc." "they had to change down there and stay there." "Later it became a sort of hotel for officers passing through." "They called it "billeting office", everybody who passed through here could spend the night." "In the end - for years, I think - it housed the CIC [Counter-Intelligence Corps]." "They cleared out after 12 years." "Still thinking it was Hitler property, they" " I'd almost say, looted the house completely." "They hardly left anything in place." "I have photos which show the state these gentlemen left the house in." "Wahnfried had been distroyed by bombs." "As no one was permitted to enter the grounds, the Gls could search through the rubble for anything they wanted to take home as souvenirs." "Because of this, hardly any of Wahnfried's furniture and fittings survived." "I had hoped to be allowed to withdraw 100.000 marks from my savings which were immediately seized, to hand them over to my custodian, each of us had a custodian, in order to restore Wahnfried." "A local building firm which belonged to the future minister Pönert, immadiately agreed to erect a scaffolding around and cover the roof, so that the house was no longer exposed to the elements." "The scaffolding had already been put up when the American governor, in accordance with the City Mayor Meyer, ordered the scaffolding to be removed at once, because a rebuilding of Wahnfried was totally out of the question." "Because of this, until 1949, Wahnfried remained in the ruinous state it was put in on 5th April 1945., it was exposed to the wind and rain, and this caused far greater damage than the actual bombing." "5. day" "Then and now:" "The Siegfried-Wagner-House" "I mentioned that the Americans lived in the so-called Siegfried-Wagner-house, the former guest house, for 12 years." "During those 12 years I didn't succeed in convincing them that the house was my private property." "Until the end they firmly believed that it had belonged to Adolf Hitler." "That is why, when they moved out after 12 years in 1957, they left the house in a state which can only be described as "devastated by the Russians"." "This is what the garden room used to look like before." "After the Americans had moved out and when I had a look around, it looked like this." "And so it goes on." "Another part of the garden room, there was a desk and chairs and carpets etc., it was empty after that, the whole part, all the curtains were gone." "That was my so-called music room, here the grand piano." "There was hardly anything left." "Here another part, the fireplace, the state of the room when the Americans moved in, and this is how they left it, all the things on the mantlepiece were gone." "Look at the state of the armchairs, the table was missing." "The dining room." "They took away the table." "And the chairs were in a deplorable state." "A view from the upper floor." "Here, that was my upper study." "That's what the wall looked like when they took over, this is the same wall." "This is the way it looked when I got the house back." "This is another wall." "You see how the chairs looked, as I said, they either took it away of smashed it." "Again, the other wall and what was left of it." "The sofa and armchairs went God knows where, they took them too." "That's all the documentation I could establish at the time." "That's finished isn't it." "postscriptum Wahnfried 1914" "When I got married and moved to Wahnfried in 1915, we were already in the middle of the war." "But during the First World War our home country was more or less spared actual acts of war." "And everyday life continued as usual except for food shortages, particularly in Wahnfried." "The house was in fact very beautifully designed but incredibly impractical." "The kitchen and service quarters were in the basement." "The reception rooms were on the raised ground floor, i.e. the great hall, the dining room, the so-called violet salon, my mother-in-law's living room, and the great salon where receptions were held etc." "Then there were spiral staircases at the right and left side of the house, leading up to a so-called mezzanine where were the dressing rooms and bathrooms." "From there more spiral staircases led to the upstairs rooms, mainly bedrooms." "So it was, counting the basement a four-storied house." "And when my mother-in-law, living on the fourth floor, needed anything, the servants had to carry up the things three flights of stairs." "At that time there was no elevator, neither for persons nor for goods." "Everything was carried out on foot." "Because of this, the number of servants was frightful, at least for me." "My mother-in-law required a nurse - an old maid, who later also became an invalid and needed to be looked after by another nurse." "So two elderly ladies looked after my mother-in-law." "In the kitchen there was a female cook and a kitchen maid." "For my husband, for his personal needs and the cleaning up of his own little house, we had a man-servant who also answered the door and served at table." "For the rooms there were two chambermaids, it was too much for just one, and we needed a gardener to attend to the large garden who couldn't handle it on his won, he had an assistant too." "When our children were born we also had a nanny." "That was the whole team." "It seems amazing nowadays." "I now make do in this relatively large house with a help, usually known as a charwoman." "She comes every morning for 3 to 4 hours." "In Wahnfried I used to have more than 9, later 10 servants at my disposition." "Now we ought to tackle the de-nazification procedure after '45." "Couldn't we go back to the Chamberlain business first ?" "Like we agreed yesterday, I was hoping to find those things." "Very well, let's do this now, them I'm done with it." "Can I start right away?" "I promised to look for Chamberlain's letter to Adolf Hitler, written after his first visit on October 7th, 1923." "And I succeeded." "I mentioned it because people always found my support of Hitler difficult to understand." "You know, "an educated woman like you" and all that, I'm being constantly blamed for this." "I had always referred to Chamberlain, who, after all, was a level-headed man of 68, also an Englishman." "After his first encounter with Hitler he was so deeply impressed by his personality that he wrote him the following letter:" "" My thoughts have been occupied with the question of why you of all people, with your unusual capacity for arousing souls from sleep and torpor, recently made me a present of a long and invigorating sleep, the like of which I have not experienced" "since that fateful day in August 1914 when the pernicious illness befell me." "Now I think that this describes and so to speak encompasses your character." "The true rouser is also a provider of peace." "You are not, as you have been described to me, a fanatic." "I would prefer to describe you as the opposite of a fanatic." "The fanatic tries to heat up the brains, you are warming the hearts." "The fanatic tries to persuade, you want to convince and only convince." "And in this you are successful." "At any rate I would like to describe you as the opposite of a politician in the generally accepted sense of this term." "for the axis of all politics is the adherence to a party, whereas with you, all parties disappear, consumed by a patriotic fervour." "You have a tremendous task ahead of you, but in spite of your strenght of will I do not regard you as violent." "There is a force whose essence according to Goethe is to shape the cosmos." "And Goethe says of it that "it establishes its own set of rules." ""But even in greatness it is not violence."" "That's a quotation from Faust II." "I mean it in the cosmos building sense when I count you among the builders and not as one of the violent." "The calming effect you had on me was very much due to your eyes and your hand gestures." "Your eyes I liken to your hands, they have the gift of gripping a person and holding him." "And your hands, they are so expressive in their movements that they can rival your eyes." "Such a man can give a poor plagued spirit solace, particularly when he is pledged to the service of his fatherland." "My belief in Germany's greatness has never wavered for an instant, although, I confess, my hopes had reached a low ebb." "In one instant you have transformed my soul."" "This is a description of Hitler, his charisma and character, at the beginning of his career." "And it was like this that we all first got to know him at the time." "Indictment and De-nazification" "When the Americans moved into Bayreuth, I went into exile in Oberwarmensteinach, I already talked about my stay up there." "The Americans immediately picked on all party members." "The men were automatically arrested, as the called it, and put into camps until their alleged crimes had been elicited." "Many of them were then sent to prison for years, others were released." "The women were treated a bit more leniently, but not gently either." "On day in Oberwarmensteinach I received my so-called indictment." "In this indictment I was accused of having been a beneficiary." "The mere fat of having been a party member was already a crime." "I can't remember all the things they accused me of." "One had to justify oneself before a so-called de-nazification tribunal." "In my opinion, that tribunal had already been prepared in advance in America." "No jurists participated, only laymen, opponents of the party of course." "They had the role of the so-called prosecutors." "I was the accused and they were the prosecutors." "Usually there was one prosecutor, but I had two." "One of them was a factory worker from Bayreuth, the other an itinerant preacher from Silesia." "It seemed to me that neither had a clue what the case was about." "But that's how these cases were tried." "The prosecutors accused you then of God knows what all." "One was permitted to defend oneself, and have a defence counsel." "Mine was Dr. Fritz Meyer I, the family lawyer who represented my case with utmost diligence." "So at my first court hearing - the prosecuting factory worker had once done some building work for me, one day he distributed illegal leaflets from Switzerland here and been imprisoned." "Builders were scarce at the time." "I had managed to get him released from prison." "Of course, that wasn't mentioned during the trial." "But my impression was that the man was feeling a bit embarrassed with me." "The Silesian itinerary preacher had no idea whatsoever;" "he knew nothing about Bayreuth, Wagner or Hitler or anything." "Theses men indicted me in the first instance - if you can call it that - as the main guilty party." "I was sentenced to several years of hard labour and to a confiscation of part of my property and I don't know what else." "I immediately appealed against it." "And by the time appeal came up, the hearing at the tribunal [of 1st instance] was in 1947, the year 1949 had come." "The sentences:" "Confiscation of property, hard labour, lifelong ban on directing the festival, ban on public speaking, an allowance of 150 marks per month from the blocked account." "The appeal court classified me as less incriminated, I think, 3rd degree." "So I was neither interned nor was I sentenced to hard labour." "But I had to refrain from any preaching, public speaking, public activity of any sort." "They wanted me to give my word to take up only simple work." "I was forbidden to direct the Festival, once and for all, for political reasons, that's what they said." "Now the question of the succession came up." "I was told by the Special Ministy in Munich that if I refrained in writing from any participation, they would consider to appoint both my sons as my successors." "Allow me to read the wording of my waiver:" "It was addressed to the so-called Bavarian State Ministry for Special Tasks." ""I herewith solemny undertake to abstain from any participation in the organization, management and direction of the Bayreuth festival." "Following an intention I have long cherished, I will entrust my sons, Wieland and Wolfgang, with the designated tasks and grant them the necessary power-of-attorney." "I order my defense cousel, Dr. Meyer of Bayreuth, to hand over this declaration to the Special Ministry with a copy to all ministries and offices concerned with this matter." "Thereupon I revceived on 28th February 1949 the decision of the Bavarian State Ministry for Special Tasks:" ""Ref." "Frau Winifred Wagner, at present residance Oberwarmensteinbach, house no. 32" "After the person involved (all the party members were made out to be criminals and were referred to as persons involved)" "After the person involved has undertaken to abstain from any participation in the organization, management and direction of the Bayreuth Festival and to entrust these tasks to her sons and to grant them the necessary powers-of-attorney, in accordance with art. 53 of the Exoneration Law, ruled under no. 6 of the decision of the Court of Appeal Bayreuth on 8th Dec. 1949," "i.e. the blocking of property, particularly property dedicated to the Bayreuth Festival, and the appointment of a trustee have been rescinded." "The final order concerning the blocked proptery will be made when the party involved has been finally classified as a less incriminated person." "Signed:" "Dr. Hagenauer, Minister of State"" "This was the sign for my sons to take up their new task, full of energy." "The inflation came to a halt in 1949." "All liquid assets in Germany were reduced to 10% of their value." "My sons had to recreate the whole business from scratch." "The sons" "Like I already told, Wieland and his family were at Lake Constance at the time." "He then came at once to Bayreuth and he started to make the ruins of Wahnfried more or less habitable." "My son Wolfgang used to live with me in Oberwarmensteinbach for a while." "But he had settled in Bayreuth in the meantime." "From 1949 onwards, both devoted themselves entirely and with enthusiasm to the revival of the Festival." "Wolfgang ..." "or let me better start with Wieland:" "Wieland was a totally impractical man, an artist through and through, and of organization, financing, business affairs etc. he knew very little." "Wolfgang, who was much more practical, took over this part of the organisation." "So he was rather neglected as to artistic tasks in the first years." "Wolfgang only had the time to directed one out of six or seven productions, and Wieland did all the others." "Nothing could be done with the funds available in 1949." "It was only possible to re-open the Festival in 1951." "The house had to be repaired." "It had suffered no major damage during the war." "Some damage caused by machine guns, damages on the roof." "Most of the damage was caused by ignorant black American troops." "They stormed the house when Bayreuth was occupied, plundered the dressing rooms, shot the remaining lighting equipment, expensive lenses, to pieces with their guns." "And a heap of broken glass lay on the stage." "I must mention that the Americans when occupying Bayreuth had confiscated the Festival House for their own use and stationed troop welfare there, we haven't talked about that yet." "They put on the most incredible shows up there," "Billy's Golden Horse Show and such, revues and dancing shows, we have a whole list of all the their programs." "So, a pure troop entertainment location." "When I intervened and asked the governor to put a stop it, he said:" ""A theatre is a theatre, and in a theatre there will be play-acting."" "Talking about the Festival and its special place wasn't possible, the governor was originally captain of a Brooklyn fire brigade." "One couldn't expect him know the Festival and Richard Wagner's work." "So the house too had to be got ready before the festival began." "And that took two years." "The troops had stolen all the old costumes, they hadn't behaved decently, they used the cupboards as toilets and abused and defaced the house in evey respect." "Little did I know that when the Festival was opened in 1951, that Wieland during his retreat on Lake Constance had studied the works in detail and had reached a completly new style of presentation." "He called it in his somewhat rough way of speaking "clearing away the junk from the stage"." "In fact, the stage was almost bare anyway." "With a sure artistic instict, he created atmosphere largely by lighting effects." "I believed at the time that this was forced on him by economical reasons, because there was no money for sets and that one wanted to make ends meet this way." "I was much surprised when it developed into a new style and even caused quite a stir, also outside Bayreuth." "The Wieland Wagner style has become quite well known by now." "He did similar work in many German and foreign theatres." "And the strange thing is that I am now witnessing, after about 25 years, that this style is regarded as dated." "Wolfgang's personality as an artist, but I've mentioned this before is not as revolutionary as Wieland's." "He kept to the golden mean, that's what I think personally, between the styles of the Preetorius/Tietjen/ Furtwängler/Strauss/Toscanini/de Sabata era, a sort of happy middle road between Wieland and that period." "Personally, I prefer this middle-of-the-road style, if we can call it that, as it comes closer to Wagner's instructions than Wieland's absolute, abstract, empty stage." "I think that the performer on the stage must occupy space which has its limits too." "But I liked some of Wieland's productions, particularly his "Meistersinger"." "He made three versions, I liked the first one best." "But on the whole I tend to prefer Wolfgang's way of staging." "Other external customs have also changed since 1951." "It used to be considered unseemly for the singers to be applauded in the Festival House." "After the curtain came down at the end, the audience would applaud, but never would a single singer have dared to step before the curtain." "The general idea was that here, the applause was intended for the creator of the work." "None of the participants ever stepped in front of the curtain, until 1951, until the so-called Neu-Bayreuth." "And I saw that my husband who used to be the only director in the house and who also frequently conducted, when the audience called for him to come out, he would never step in front of the curtain," "he used to come into the auditorium and to take a bow in front of the first row." "Never in front of the curtain." "Of course, one knows that an artist needs applause." "And the artist got his applause too." "It was arranged like this:" "After the performance and after they had changed, the artists would come to the festival restaurant." "Everybody with his flower bouquet, accompanied by his fans and relatives or spouses and children would make an entrance." "The entire festival restaurant was filled by the audience after the performance." "And the audience demonstrated its enthusiasm and gratitude in the festival restaurant." "There would be a lot of applause." "There was an long artists' table reserved every night after the performance." "The artists and persons in charge would sit there." "In the early years it used to be my husband - later I took over." "This led to personal contacts with the artists, and between the artists and the audience." "Today the restaurant is visited before the performance by coffee drinking guests, and again during both intervals." "During the second interval mosts guest have their dinner nowadays." "After that, no one visits the same restaurant for the 4th time after the performance." "And that's how this tradition got lost." "The artists are applauded on stage." "And after the applause everyone disperses, the audience as well as all the artists." "A part of the artists go home, another part to their regular pubs or whatever." "And the audience gets dispersed as well." "Anyway, today the Festival House is completely deserted after the performance." "I think it was much more personal in the old times." "Another reason is that the tenant of the festival restaurant, in the old times, came as soon as rehearsals began." "There would be a special meal at a reduced price for the artists so that they didn't go to town for lunch." "So that even during preliminay rehearsals the artists would be together, and of course mainly in the evenings." "My husband never rehearsed after 8 p.m." "But he would start at 8 a.m., that was very hard for some of the artists." "He was very punctual and attached a lot of importance to it, he was always 15 min. early, so everyone would be there at 8 sharp, as ordered." "And since the tenant had opened the restaurant already during rehearsals, we sat with the artists in the restaurant every evening too." "That made for a far greater personal contact, we discussed things, stories were told, one got to know the people better." "There existed a much more personal contact than is possible today." "Effective democratization:" "1." "Applause - 2." "The drive 3. the centre box" "Each thing has its two sides:" "Today everybody, no matter who, has get out of the car at the right side of the Festival House and walk along the front of the festival house to the centre and then enter through the main entrance." "That can mean making 30-50 steps through the pouring rain, what isn't very agreeable." "Also, it makes police protection for celebrities difficult." "It was much simpler when people could drive right up to the main entrance and get out there." "But he wanted to erase all memories of the past, like Hitler driving up to the entrance and being greeted by a cheering crowd, he doesn't want this to be remembered, so all this is completely gone now." "Speaking of the so-called centre box, there used to be three separate boxes for..." "let's call them celebrities." "Originally for the members of the princely families coming to Bayreuth." "Later Hitler sat in the centre box with his entourage." "Today members of the Federal Goverment and the Bavarian Ministers sit there." "But they are seated there as part of the crowd." "There are no longer any partitions and there is no longer a special box, like in most of the theatres, there's a small partition at the sides, and the box has no longer any representational function, like it used to have." "So Wolfgang ensured an effective democratization of all aspects." "Now I must ask about some more things." "Your own impression, totally subjective, when you saw in 1951 and the following years the new Wieland productions and and ... didn't you show some kind of strong reaction?" "If you think of Götz Friedrich nowadays." "But there was nothing I could do!" "I had been ordered to keep my mouth shut." "I wasn't allowed to say anything." "And I must say, I also didn't want to say anything." "I always followed my mother-in-law's example." "She collapsed after her Tristan produciton in 1906 and she handed over the entire direction of the Festival to her son." "From 1908 onwards she never intervened, neither with words nor with advice nor with anything." "She trusted her son to do the right thing." "And I must say, I took the example of my mother-in-law as given, and I made a vow not to interfere with anything, besides of it having been forbidden anyway." "But I could have done it at home, in private, with my sons, but I never did." "The wall" "That my son in his ... how shall I put it in his very radical artistic manner couldn't always count on my applause, and that I occasionally went too far with him, that's true." "And ... but it usually concerned personal matters, family affairs." "He was very emotional and kept falling in love with beautiful, gifted women." "His last affair with Anja Silja caused me a lot of unhappiness." "My grandchildren were neglected, and one didn't know what ..." "There was no doubt that Wieland and Anja would get married." "And the thought that she would be the future mistress of Wahnfried," "I couldn't bear the idea." "Wieland knew that very well." "When the Americans vacated this house in 1957" "I had just recovered from a serious illness, an operation etc." "The doctor had forbidden that I spent another winter in the cold Fichtel mountains." "It goes without saying that I said I would move back to Bayreuth." "And I told this my son Wieland." "Three generations living so close together, Wieland felt it was unsuitable, that's how he expressed it, not willed by God." "That is why he had a wall built between this house and his house, Wahnfried." "This was to enable everyone to live their own lives." "Later I came to appreciate this and found it quite beneficial." "Everybody had his independence." "But at the time, when he built the wall, I felt very hurt." "But later I praised it." "The wall has just been been blown up." "So these times are gone too." "And hopefully, Wahnfried is being reconstructed in its original form, like in Richard Wagner's time, and through our charitable trust is being turned into a museum." "Wieland + Hitler and the final victoy" "Wieland completely rejected Hitler in the end, he said "Adolf Hitler is finished for me."" "And with that, the matter was finished for him." "But you're somebody who didn't think that way." "You've had to listen to your own son reproach you that you still believed in the final victory." "How do you understand such a change of attitude within the family?" "Oh well, hundreds of thousands thought like Wieland." "It's a gross exaggeration to say that I believed in final victoy." "I stopped doing that after Stalingrad." "But I couldn't dismiss the Hitler I knew as a human being," "I couldn't banish him from my mind." "I admit that everything that happened during the second half of the war is to be totally condemned, and I condemn it." "But I won't "throw the baby out with the bathwater"." "What I thought was good and humane about the man, that I refuse to let them take away from me, my memories and my ..." "He was an absolutely unique personality and knowing him is an experience I wouldn't have missed." "Actually I wanted to know something else." "I understand and respect your position and I hope others will do as well, but what interests me: here, within your family, your own home, there is somebody who acted differently, and if we want to respect his change of position from Hitler's darling to a total rejection, and if you too want to respect this..." "Can you respect this, and are you without anger, doing this?" "Can you be tolerant or are you ..." "I must say I never understood Wieland's radical change of opinion." "And I regretted this because in fact, the boy owes his life to this man." "He exempted him from military service, all he did for him, favoured him in every way." "I cannot understand why at least a feeling of gratitude had made him keep silent." "I don't mind at all people keeping their opinions to themselves, not professing in public that they have become the opposite of what they were, etc." "I couldn't have done that." "My son was able to do it, and I have had to accept it." "And in the end you respected this and you're not angry with him?" "No, our personal relationship has always been good." "For instance, when I was ill Wieland was the one who worried the most." "Our characters are very different." "My willingness to compromise was always regarded as weakness of character." "Wieland was always much more ..." "how shall I say ... decisive in everything." "Either he loved or he hated." "Throughout my long life I have learnt that one can only get along with people, on the long run, if one is prepared to meet them half-way, cedes to them in some things even if you're of a different opinion." "I believe always got on well with the people I came in contact with." "Winifred Wagner: "I don't think anyone in a similar position has had to endure anything like I have."" "Shortly after 1945, I can't remember the year, Furtwängler conducted a concert in Munich." "A local doctor, a great admirer of Furtwänger, took me there in his car." "Because at the time I didn't have any means, my account was blocked," "I had 150 Reichsmark a month to live on, the car was confiscated etc." "I was dependent on getting a lift." "So a local doctor took me with him to Munich." "And I greeted Furtwängler - he also had to pass through the denazification tribunal - and he said: "My God, Frau Wagner, but buckets of dirt are being emptied over you, how can you bear it?"" "I told him that it didn't concern me very much, that it didn't touch me inside at all, then I asked myself why it didn't touch me inside." "I think the reason was that I didn't feel guilty of any crime at all." "Had I felt guilty, then I would have felt the "buckets" somehow, but as it was, it just dripped off." "Winifred Wagner: "To make it quite clear:" "I shouldered all the blame."" ""I was the scapegoat and I came through all right, and because of it, the two boys were cleared." "Because really, when you think of Wieland ... "" ""... isn't that being a beneficiary?" "Regional director of culture, exemption from military servide etc.?"" "WW after 1945 :" "Arrival in Bayreuth at 17, takeover at 33, all over at 48?" "When I moved back to Bayreuth in 1957," "I first had to create some kind of a life for myself here in Bayreuth." "Furnishing the place kept me busy at first, you just saw pictures of the state the house was in when the Americans moved out in 1957." "My first aim was to furnish the house in a nice and cozy way." "Gradually I organised my life which meant that when there was no Festival, I would write letters every morning from 8 to 12." "I have an enormous correspondence to cope with, this is because my sons don't have the time to answer personal letters." "I still talk about both of my sons although Wieland unfortunately died in 1966." "Now there's only Wolfgang." "They don't have the time to cope with private corrspondence." "And that's why 80% of the letters are from people I don't know." "They ask questions about the Festival, about Wagner, about Bayreuth, about the family." "They even ask me about the performing artists, what happened to them, if they made records etc." "Anyway, it's an enourmous correspondence, I sometimes don't even get through in one morning." "I type all my letters;" "I couldn't manage it by hand." "At the moment there are frequent consultations with the young architect who is about to reconstruct Wahnfried, since I'm the only one, I lived in Wahnfried from 1915 to 1945, and can remember most of the details," "I'm the only one he can ask." "After an early lunch I take a rest." "If possible, I lie down outside after lunch." "The afternoon is reserved for friends," "I give invitations or I'm invited by friends." "When I return in the evening, I sit down to read, preferably biographies, a biography of Alexander the Great at the moment, by Schachtermeyr, a wonderful book," "And I read with greatest pleasure a biography of Frederick the Great by Nancy Mitford." "The name of Mitford will be know to some people through Unity Mitford, who played a certain part in the Führer's circle, she was a fanatical Englishwoman, who was totally under the spell of National Socialism." "She tried to get close to Hitler at every opportunity." "She was known as "Mit-fahrt" [co-driver] as she would always come along." "And that's what she did." "She usually accompanied him on all party congregations, and also came along to Bayreuth." "She had six sisters and a brother;" "the brother died in the war, and one of her sisters was the very talented Nancy Mitford, she died recently." "The biography of Frederick the Great is quite remarkable for an Englishwoman who had lived in Paris for years." "But that's just an aside." "Today: up to 30 letters daily, Reading:" "Charlemagne, Frederick the Great, Travels" "Travels to Greece, England, Sicily, Spain, Egypt, a tour of Scandinavia, 1975" "Everyday life:" "Honorary citizen of Bayreurh, Richard Wagner associations, charity foundation, friends, concerts, family." "[reel change]" "In order to keep in contact with the artists, or establish contact with newly engaged artists," "I ty to invite possibly all of the artists " "I don't always succeed because some may have other obligations, or leave when they're not performing." "I try to invite them to my home." "The soloists and the conductors - 6 to 10 people at the most, for lunch." "The groups, say, all the flower maidens, or the little masters," "I try to unite them at my home in the afternoons, in groups of about 20." "The garden is very important, we can sit outside." "We mostly chat there until the evening." "The people say to me jokingly that they like to come to coffee to me, because I don't serve coffee but mocca." "chapter:" "Grey eminence?" "Influence?" " I personally?" " Yes." "No, I never do this." "I already told you that I never interfere in any way with what happens up on the Festival hill." "Of course, I am free to comment on the results of the work." "And I never hesitate to say what I like and what I don't like." "In the case of "Tannhäuser" is was like that ... at first, most of the audience wasn't satisfied and missed the whole point of the concept." "And I admit I sympathized with their attitude." "But there is no such thing as a grey eminence." "That's totally out of the question." "I must remain loyal to my son." "He carries the final responsibility for everything." "I aim to approve all of his decisions and engagements, if possible." "For the time being, the foundation has guaranteed Wolfgang the direction of the Festival for life, or for as long as he feels up to it." "Should Wolfgang want to resign one day, the question of his successor is laid down in the Foundation's charter." "A number of directors of the major German theatres, representatives of the family and the Foundation will decide on the question of a successor." "Should a member of the family prove to be capable, he or she should be given preference." "The family + the Foundation board decide on the successor in Bayreuth." "On Winifred Wagner's initiative Wagner's inheritance is turned into a Foundation." "the Festival House, Wahnfried, the archives containing all of Richard Wagner's scores, are handed over to the Foundation ... in exchange for DM 12.5 million which will be divided among the five branches of the family." "Until 1976 there is still a hope that other members of the family of the 3rd generation might eventually be persuaded to participate in some way." "Obviously they must have proved their worth outside Bayreuth first and show that they are capable of participating here." "I'd be very glad if by then ... in 1976 the Festival will have been run by the family for 100 years," "I would be very glad if it could still be directed by the family in the next generation." "I regret that my son Wolfgang won't be able to stage in the anniversay year 1976, due to overwork and financial worries, staff problems etc., that he cannot find the time to stage a new production of the "Ring"." "He has delegated the new staging of the four works to a French team." "Like all the Bayreuth fans, I am curious to see how the French will tackle this formidable task." "Maybe in Wolfgang's subconscious mind gratitude also plays a role." "But I could be wrong." "From the vey beginning, the French have been Richard Wagner's most loyal devotees." "Since 1876 they have provided the largest contingent of foreign visitors to Bayreuth." "It's possible that this influenced his decision." "Wolfgang had talked with several German producers, but there was no agreement on stylistic matters, so those negotiations came to nothing." "The invitation list for the festival summer of 1975" "I draw up this list every year to simplify the business of inviting the artists." "These eternal queries whether the ladies and gentlemen are free or not, take up too much time." "And I invented a list:" "On the left side all the names are listed in alphabetical order." "This year there are 49 soloists." "At the top are the dates of the performances and the title of the opera is written down." "And then I simple enter into each column when the artists have to sing and when they are free." "This is very simple, in the top row you have Adam, for example." "He has hardly anything to do in the first cycle." "ln the second he sings Sachs and Wotan." "I can see it all." "So I will try to invite Adam during the first cycle." "And so on through the list:" "Singers with several small parts are particularly full up." "Steinbach, the first knight in Parsifal Melot in Tristan, a master in the Meistersinger, Froh in the Ring, and this is repeated, hardly has any free days." "And the same goes for one of the flowers, Trudeliese Schmidt." "She's the first "Knappe" in Parsifal, a Rhine maiden in Rheingold, a Valkyrie etc." "then she has to sing in Götterdämmerung, in Parsifal, etc." "So this makes things a lot easier for me." "Gottfried Wagner Son of Wolfgang Wagner." "Grandson of Winifred Wagner." "It's always so difficult." "Often your dad wants an extra rehearsal or some conductor wants to torture the people some more, so that people can't come in the afternoons." "Many of them also go away between performances, they have engagements at their home theatre, etc." "I'll make a note of it, I'll put a tick next to Steinbach." "I'll try to invite all the "little masters"." "Then he'll join us." "I have been been really unlucky with some people." "For instance, I have never been able to get hold of Ligendza." "She always said she wasn't feeling well and she had to rest and just got an injection etc." "and that she'd rather invite me to Munich." "And so it goes." "[Gwyneth] Jones comes regularly." "Carlos Kleiber is rather difficult because he doesn't like to be with anybody else, so last year I invited his friend Mützel and his girlfriend too." "So what in Heaven's name are we going to do now?" "[reel change]" "Final questions" "Are there things which for family reasons, for reasons of their being too private, or in consideration of today's management of the house, you'd rather not have mentioned?" "Oh well, what can I say?" "You asked me about the political situation during the National Socialist period." "Actually, from Wolfgang's point of view, it is undesirable to have these things mentioned again." "For there are always a number of people in official positions who would use this as a reason to cut down on subsidies." "Again and again they talk about "these old Nazis at Bayreuth"." "And that those times are in fact over, and that they have nothing to do with the Festival today...." "I found it difficult to talk about those times because I didn't want to provide the authorities with another excuse to attack Bayreuth." "Winifred Wagner as Wife-Manager-Mother and women's liberation?" "I don't know what my children think about me." "While Siegfried was still alive I had decided to devote myself primarily to my husband." "Other people could look after the children, but not after my husband, and to assist him." "Because I told myself, somebody else can look after the children at their young age." "Whereas nobody else could look after my husband." "He needed me constantly." "Not only to read to him, or as his secretay, as "lighting rod", to keep away from him everything that was unpleasant, and to receive the people he didn't want to see or didn't like." "I always stepped in for that." "I organized all his trips and worked out all the schedules, booked hotel rooms," "I was, so to speak, his manager." "And I took the view that in this case, the husband was more important than the children." "In the household I gave all the instructions, but left the actual work to others." "I carried out my representational duties." "I allowed myself about six weeks holiday a year." "I used to go to my little house on Lake Constance, usually from the beginning of September, sometimes until November, the weather permitting." "I could always be reached there by telephone." "Furtwängler had a habit of ringing me from Switzerland where he was staying, at midnight which I didn't like much." "I did not regard myself here in Bayreuth as the sole or the first leading figure." "I wouldn't have enjoyed that." "I only enjoyed working when it could help others and when there was a general agreement about the work and pleasure in the work." "I never told Tietjen, "you either do it this way or I say no!"" "We always talked and reached agreement, and this also applied to the sets." "I often suggested changes for set designs, which were occasionally gratefully accepted and executed, for instance, in the case of "Lohengrin", act 2, I had several objections to Preetorius' sets." "I made my suggestions and they were followed." "Are there things which had better not be mentioned with a working method of this kind?" "Did you have to be diplomatic at some moments?" "Not really." "The co-operation during those years was very harmonious, we agreed mostly in everything, there were in fact no real problems." "An occasional a ..." "how shall a say ... a slight disagreement which would make Furtwängler declare, for example, that he wouldn't conduct the general rehearsal of Tristan that afternoon." "Very upset, I went to Tietjen, who said:" ""Don't get upset, do you imagine he'd allow anybody else on that rostrum at 4 p.m.?"" "He was an old theatre hand and he knew exactly that this was just a tantrum of his." "Toscanini was much more difficult, but on another occasion." "After my husband's death, on 8th August, we had a memorial service in the festival house." "Each of the conductors conducted one part of this concert." "Furtwängler had at part, Toscanini a part, and I think Elmendorff was there too." "Toscanini's rehearsal was set for 12 o'clock," "Furtwängler's rehearsal was set for 11 o'clock," "And when Toscanini came on the stage at 12 o'clock, and when Furtwängler wasn't ready yet, in a rage Toscanini turned round, got into his car, drove to Marienbad and wasn't seen anymore." "He returned in the evening." "I found him like a naughty child here in this house, on the terrace, sitting there facing the wall." "These great artist were sometimes like children." "My husband had told me when I married him:" ""Don't get too intimate with them, and treat them all alike," ""and remember that in fact you are dealing with children."" "That was the way he talked." "Of course, that wasn't to be taken literally." "But by this model of behaviour I got on quite well with everybody." "In all the years of directing the festival I never had a law suit, no quarrel of any sorts." "I never needed a lawyer." "We always managed without one." "The lost Wagner manuscripts." "The story of the Wagner scores which were given to Ludwig and which are lost until today." "Could you tell us that story again?" "It's such a long and complicated story and I can't remember all the names involved off hand." "During their long friendship Wagner presented Ludwig with a whole lot of manuscripts." "Of course, after Ludwig's death those manuscripts came into the possession of the Wittelsbachs." "And in the year ... when was that, so Hitler came ... yes 1939" "For his 50th birthday a big industrial concern in the Ruhr region wanted to give Hitler a suitable present." "And sombody must have known that part of the Wittelsbach compensatory funds that remained in the possession of the family after the kingdom had been abolished, so they were in their personal possossion." "Some people claim that they were forced to sell the things." "Anyway, the manuscripts were sold to the industrial concern for 800.000 marks and were presented to Hitler on his 50th birthday." "He had only learnt through us that they were the original manuscripts." "It never occurred to him that he would be given original manuscripts of Richard Wagner, and he was overjoyed because of this gift." "Maybe he planned to donate them to Bayreuth later." "We were always tying to persuade him, especially after the outbreak of the war, to put the manuscripts in our archives." "But he always thought the things would be safer with him than with us." "And so it happened, that near the end of the war, although my son Wieland visited him as late as April 1945 in Berlin, to ask him again for the manuscripts, that no one knows where that place is situated that Hitler thought was safer than Bayreuth." "I asked all the survivors of Hitler's entourage - starting with Albert Bormann, Martin Bormann's brother, since Martin is missing," "Kannenberg, Linge and Wünsche - all the adjutants." "I waited for 20 years until Speer was released from Spandau." "Speer doesn't know anything either." "I can't find out who Hitler entrusted with safeguarding the manuscripts." "At the end of the war I immediately informed Interpol so that they would be fully informed in case the manuscripts were found by the allies or the Russian or somebody, so that they knew at once what they were dealing with, and that they should try to secure the manuscripts." "I didn't want them for ourselves, as the family had no claim on them." "I was concerned with the preservation of these irreplacable papers;" "they include the scores of "Hochzeit" and "Feen"." "At the moment, the head of the American Art Foundation, Carlton Smith, took an interest in these matters right from the start." "Now he has got in touch with the Siemens company." "It seems they have designed detectors for finding hidden objects." "He wants to search the bunker of the Obersalzberg again which has only been partly investigated and then been closed up." "He's hoping to find out in what Austrian salt mines he eventually might have stored things." "As yet we have found no trace." "On one occasion I thought I'd found something, but that failed too." "I read that the "Foundation of the Prussian Cultural Heritage" had purchased in Switzerland a letter of Frederick the Great to Fredersdorf." "And I know that a letter by Frederick the Great to Fredersdorf had also been presented to Hitler on his 50th birthday." "And I thought the manuscripts might be with this letter too." "The "Foundation of the Prussian Cultural Heritage" was very helpful and pursued evety line of enquiy but with no results." "Either Richard Wagner's manuscripts are still hidden, let's hope they are so that we can find them, or they have been lost and destroyed." "If Hitler had left them somewhere in the Reich Chancellery, them I am afraid they will have fallen either into the hands of the Russians or have been destroyed by fire and bombs." "The following original Wagner manuscripts were sold by the Wittelsbach heirs to the Federation of German Industries on the occasion of Hitler's 50th birthday:" "Original scores :" "Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot, Rienzi, Rheingold (2nd fair copy) , Walküre, Siegfried (parts), Götterdämmerung (parts)" "How did you come to call him "Wolf"?" "I couldn't say." "I really don't know." "All I know is that he generally used "Wolf" as a code-name." "Members of his household and friends called him "chief", Rudolf Hess for example." "Close friends, like the Bechsteins, they only called him Wolf." "It was an easy code-name." "After the war we old National Socialists invented a new name for him, since we couldn't talk about him in public, whenever we wanted to talk about him we called him USA:" "Unser Seelinger (our blessed) Adolf." "He once gave you a dressing-down, at the death of the young Roller, I think you..." "Yes, that was the first and only time that he was really angy with me." "At the outbreak of war he had asked me for the names of any talented young men so that they could be exempted from military service at the front." "My list included Ulli Roller, the son of Alfred Roller." "He was like his father a very talented set designer, who was also known and highly thought of by Hitler." "I talked to Ulli Roller about this exemption whereupon he indignantly rejected this." "He said he refused to be exempted and that he wanted to fight." "I felt then that I wasn't entitled to have someone exempted against his express wishes, and I didn't put down his name on my exemption list." "Ulli Roller was later killed on the Russian front, while patrolling on a motorcyle." "When Hitler heard about this he really told me off, "how could I negelect to exempt this man!" ... etc." "And when I told him how Uli had declined, he refused to accept my explanation." "For a while relations between us were very strained, because I was in a way responsible for Ulli Roller's death." "The marriage of Winifred Wagner + Hitler?" "Eva Braun was never here?" "He never brought Eva Braun here, and I barely knew of her existence." "The subject was taboo here." "There were certain people he never brought here, because he knew they wouldn't fit in with us." "For instance, Streicher was a person we always kept at a distance, he never came here." "We weren't too keen on Hoffmann, the photographer, either." "Hitler never brought the photographer Hoffmann to our house when one of the family was present." "In that respect, he had a fine instict and tact, regarding people we liked and we didn't like." "Do you think his decision not to bring Eva Braun here, was a sensitive tactfulness on his part, in relation to yourself?" "Did he think you would feel hurt if he brought Eva Braun here?" "No, he generaly kept Eva Braun away from the public." "She was never anywhere to be seen." "She either stayed on the Obersalzberg, she was not admitted to any official functions at all, she was only present at small private gatherings in the evenings, or when she was in Munich, she had her small flat he had fixed her up with." "Eva Braun never appeared in public." "There is no official picture which shows them together." "There was no question of ever bringing that woman here." "It was not out of consideration for me, but, I'd almost say, out of consideration for himself, he didn't want to be the subject of gossip." "I was very often in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin while she was possibly there too, but I never met her, she was never introduced to me." "My daughter Verena ran into her on one occasion, I don't know where, maybe on the Reichs-Parteitag." "But I never met her in person, and she was never mentioned." "I once read in a French magazine that you and Hitler planned to get married." "This is downright ridiculous!" "That rumour cropped up the frist time when Wieland and Friedelind received their confirmation." "At that time, Hitler had sent me in the middle of the year, outside the festival period enormous bouqets of carnations." "That was just his way to congratulate me on my children's confirmation." "This somehow led people to think that he was courting me." "He never considered marriage." "He always said he couldn't marry because it would keep him from his duty." "This rumour has no foundation whatsoever." "Anyway it would have been impossible." "My duty lay here in Bayreuth." "And besides, let me add that my husband had laid down in his will that I could only direct the Festival as long as I didn't remarry." "So he had already seen to it that this would be impossible." "Alright, but one of the sons could have taken over prematurely and raison of state would have prevailed over family raisons." "After all, Wagner linked in marriage to Germany's First Man of State..." "No, this cojunction is pure fantasy, believe me." "It would have been pure madness to undertake such a conjunction." "We both understood each other in frienship, but we both knew that ..." "He himself, after Siegfried's death, told me that I should remain unmarried." ""I must remain a queen", that's the word he used, "remain unmarried in order to keep on ruling in Bayreuth."" "There was never any question of marriage." "And neither on his side, he too never thought of marriage." "Look at the others his name was associated with, Unity Mitford ..." "Recently an English journalist told me that there had been arrangements for a marriage." "What a mad idea:" "Since Hitler would never have married a foreigner, even if he would have considered it at all." "When did you see him last, and how did it go?" "Last meeting:" ""I can hear the rustling of the victory goddess' wings."" "I can't tell you the exact date when I say Hitler for the last time, but I know that never saw him after the attempt on his life on 20th July, 1944." "He was probably here just before that." "Before he left, he turned round and told me:" ""I can hear the rustling of the victory goddess' wings."" "This rather surprised me, considering the general military situation." "And I deduced from this that Morell was constantly giving him injections which made him see eveything in a rosy light." "Whenever he had a fit of depression," "Morell would give him an injection to pep him up." "What he said to me at the time was due to the effect of the injection." "Wasn't it painful for you that certain conductors, or Mahler's music, weren't allowed to exist?" "I am not a great admirer of Mahler's music anyway, so I didn't regret that much." "We all have our likes and dislikes." "And Mahler's music never meant much to me." "Although Alma Mahler was a friend of mine but I met her through my husband." "Alma Mahler enchanted every man, my husband as well." "I went with him to Vienna in 1920." "At that time Alma Mahler was living with Franz Werfel." "We were invited there one evening." "We spent a turbulent and amusing evening at her place." "She had just had a child by Werfel." "We were shown the child, we went into the nursey to his little bed." "I was so naive then that I asked my husband who the father of the child was." "I was just clueless." "chapter Degenerate art, e.g. Gustav Mahler" "Gustav Mahler 1882 after the first performance in Bayreuth:" ""When I came out of the Festival House, absolutety speechless I knew that I had become aware of something utterly great and painful, and that it would stay with me all through my life without suffering desecraton."" "Hitler on Parsifal:" "Pity means killing!" "Killing all that is sick... "" "...The eternal life which is granted by the Grail is only for the truly pure of heart. "" "So you don't have any more questions either." "All that business like degenerate art never got as far as here." "Isn't it strange that in a cultural institution like this place, where politics could be made, even in a positive way, even by you, that this chance hasn't been seized." "Don't you understand that someone who ponders these problems day and night, that, when he comes here, he doesn't want to see or hear about those things anymore?" "It like with your dad, when he comes home he doesn't want to talk about Festival House matters either, he too wants to relax." "My husband couldn't bear people talking music either." "He would talk about entirely different things, not about music or art, about entirely different things." "Alright, Bruno Walter wasn't here, that didn't concern you, but Toscanini left." "His reasons were political, did he..." "Is this being recorded?" "This is just running in the backgound ..." "But this must have affected your management, that such an old friend of the house, Toscanini, stayed away." "I regretted it, but I had to put up with it." "There's no point in wrecking your brains about things that can't be helped anymore." "When Toscanini wrote and cancelled, that was two weeks before rehearsals began," "I didn't have the time to lament him." "Actually, I was annoyed with him." "I thought it was unfair to leave us in the lurch after he had definitely promised me he would come." "But I am not the type who has regrets when a thing can't be solved," "I am the type who gets down to it and looks for a replacement." "Some time ago I read:" "Not accepting the darker side of a man means not loving him enough." "Of course outsiders cannot understand it that one had a relationship with the man, totally different from anybody else's." "This is absolutely unique." "He let himself be influenced too much, and ... and gave in to these radical demands." "He should have resisted." "I will never deny my friendship with him." "Wolfgang was badly injured during the Polish campaign, and he was treated by Sauerbruch at the Charité in Berlin." "And Hitler visited him there." "And this is amazing!" "When you think of all those injured soldiers lying there... and he visited Wolfgang." "He was given flowers and whatnot, the Iron Cross too." "Those are things one doesn't forget." "Maybe you can't understand it, but I am able to separate the Hitler I knew completely from what he is accused of today." "Let's imagine Gottfried were to murder a girl, and bury her in the ground and so on, that wouldn't affect the feelings I have for him at all." "I don't know how to explain this, but that's the way it is." "If Hitler came in through that door today," "I would be just as happy to see him as always." "All that dark side of things - I know it is there, but not for me because I don't know that side of him." "When I have a relationship with someone, only personal experience counts." "Maybe that will remain incomprehensible forever." "You will have to leave it to a psychologist to settle the question of my relationship with Hitler." "Let it remain a mystery to the viewers of this film, for all I care." "I can't explain it myself." "Everybody who knows me will confirm that I am an extremely loyal person." "When I become attached to someone, I stick to them through thick and thin." "I didn't feel competent to judge these things." "I'm an absolutely unpolitical person." "I was amazed when I was accused of using political influence during the trial." "When I said I wasn't involved in politics, they all laughed." "They said, of course you were involved in politics." "I wasn't involved in politics." "He took a particular interest in Wieland." "When he saw the picture of his father which Wieland had painted, he was astonished, he ordered it to be included in the Munich art exhibition." "We used to talk about harmless things like that." "Once he gave us a beautiful leather suitcase for Christmas, complete with toilet articles, shaving equipment, brushes, combs, whatnot..." "Wieland sold it." "He gave me small presents, an ivory sewing case, for example." "There's not much left now." "He designed a triple swastika pendant once and had it made." "Frau Bruckmann got one sample, and I got one." "a request to the critics of my generaton:" "one cannot take credit for  not living in barbaric times and not having to answer for having been in an exposed position." "It is relatively easy not to be a Nazi when there's no Hitler." "postscript" "Herr Sybergerg as the director of the film, has been kind enough to allow me an epilogue." "I would like to point out that my remarks naturally described only selected aspects of my life which were evoked by Herr Syberberg's questions and I have freely answered without any aide-mémoirs." "I admit that I have made mistakes including some regarding the sequence of events and I ask for indulgence." "In my description of my relationship to Adolf Hitler, I must state that my remarks refer solely to my purely personal experiences with him." "I reject any critical appraisal and leave this and any statements of mine to be analyzed by present day and future historians." "The public appears to be so astonished that I have so to speak kept silent for 30 years and asks why I have so suddenly dedided to speak." "I ask in my turn: why not?" "Let's remember the beginning the fragile happiness from the times of the Siegfried idyll" "Richard Wagner composed for this family" "Let's remember the beginning of the decline the collapse of an epoch the bankruptcy of a society and of a culture" "and let's remember that man who "turned his heart into a murderer's den"" "taking the example of another witness of those times for instance, Egon Friedell who, while suffering and close to death, dared to talk of a crisis of the European soul in his Cultural History which reached till the First World War" "He too, the fellow countryman of Karl Krauss and Gustav Mahler, didn't know what to think about Hitler" ""and now a black cloud descends over Europe and when it parts again, the man of the modern age will have passed away blown away into the night of things past into the depth of eternity, a dark saga, a dark rumour" "a pale rememberance one of the numerous variatons of the human race has reached its final destination" "and has become immortal, a picture" "thus wrote the Jewish culture-philosopher Egon Friedell published in 1932 on the outbreak of the First World War" "and the end of his times" "When Hitler's Germany marched into Austria in 1938 he remained speechless and killed himself by jumping out of the window." "The new age had begun" "The age of progress, in Germany." "First Chapter." "European society and culture either couldn't prevent it or they participated." "Winifred Wagner" "Winifred Wagner and the history of the Wahnfried House from 1914-75" "A film by Hans Jürgen Syberberg" "Camera:" "Dieter Lohman Editor:" "Agape Dorstewitz Sound and Assistance:" "Gerhard von Halem" "Music:" "Siegfried-ldyll" "Syberberg-Filmproduction Co-Production:" "Bayerischer Rundfunk and ORF Wien" "Production:" "Syberberg Film (C) München 1975" "Our thanks are due to the following authors who were quoted without mention in the commentary:" "Hannah Arendt, Hans Mayer, Joachim C. Fest, Wilhelm Theodor Wulff, Gottfried Wagner [end of reel]" "Engl. subtitles:" "DVD corrections: serdar202@KG"