Richard Wagner's Jewish Friends

Something people do not normally expect is that people's attitudes often are quite out of line with their actual behavior.  Psychologists have known of the "Attitude/behavior discrepancy" since the 1930s and it is particularly seen in anything to do with race relations.

Going further back -- into the 19th century -- we also see there some curious combinations.  The communist Karl Marx was furiously antisemitic, even though he was himself Jewish!  His essay, "Zur Judentum", is well known in that connection but his hate of Jews  emerges powerfully in his correspondence with Engels too.

And the man who coined the term "antisemitism" (he thought it was a good thing) -- The German Leftist Wilhem Marr -- three times married Jewish ladies, despite his furious antisemitism.

And the article below details a similar disjunction between the attitudes and behavior of composer Richard Wagner.

So what do we conclude from that?  In a word: caution about generalizing.  And no-one generalizes like Leftists.  Their scattergun accusations of all sorts of things being racist are simply empty-headed.

What I conclude is that it is only behaviour that matters. Words are just not useful as predictors of evil deeds.  So it is only a person who does actual harm to another person solely because of that person's race who is a real racist.  It is deeds, not words, that count.  Judging by his deeds, Wagner was actually philosemitic, rather than antisemitic

Richard Wagner, the 19th Century German composer of opera, has long been noted for his strident expressions of anti-Semitism. The most opprobrious of these has been his infamous Judaism in Music, an essay published in 1850 at the age of 37. Apart from the racist tone, it states in essence that Jews were capable of neither creating nor appreciating great art. It is with justification that he is today deemed a racist, thorough and through, with the bulk of his contempt directed at the Jews as a sub-population in his native German land.

Little noted by modern writers however is the fact that his racism seems exactly the opposite of the modern variety. Post Hitler almost no one admits to harboring such tendencies, even the many exhibiting obvious racial or religious prejudice in their daily lives. It was the opposite with Wagner. He expressed in speech and writing his overt animosity toward many groups, most explicitly toward the Jews, whom he seemed to target as a group, like some amorphous entity. Strange to say, but a fact nonetheless, in his dealings with individuals, he judged by only one attribute, namely whether the individual supported him in his life’s work, or opposed him. What ultimately mattered to him was not race or religion, but the realization of his artistic goals, his concept of art. Good and bad, right and wrong, were judged by that one criterion. With many of his close associates, including many Jews, he developed warm, close, and empathetic relationships.

Much more here


Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).