Cosima Wagner: "Just an Appallling Human Being"

Cosima Wagner (1837-1930):  “Just an Appalling Human Being”

She was the daughter of Franz Liszt, and while married to Hans von Bulow, a famous conductor, she began an affair with a much older man, Richard Wagner….

From Wikipedia…

 “Thus Cosima's anti-Semitism predates her association with Wagner, although Marek observes that he nurtured it in her, to the extent that derogatory references to Jews occur, on average, on every fourth page of her 5,000-page journal.

“The musicologist Eric Werner argues that Wagner's anti-Semitism derived in part from his initial revolutionary philosophy; as a disciple of Proudhon he saw Jewry as ‘the embodiment of possession, of monopoly capitalism.’ Cosima's had no such basis, and whereas Wagner retained an ability to revise his views on the basis of his experiences, Cosima's anti-Semitism was visceral and remained unchanged.

“Both he and Cosima were vehement anti-Semites; Hilmes conjectures that Cosima inherited this in her youth, from her father, from Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, probably from Madame Patersi and, a little later, from Bülow, ‘an anti-Semite of the first order’. Thus Cosima's anti-Semitism predates her association with Wagner, although Marek observes that he nurtured it in her, to the extent that derogatory references to Jews occur, on average, on every fourth page of her 5,000-page journal. 

“Cosima expressed to [Felix} Weingartner the view that ‘between Aryan and Semite blood there could exist no bond whatever’. In accordance with this doctrine, she would not invite Gustav Mahler (born Jewish though a convert to Catholicism) to conduct at Bayreuth, although she frequently took his advice over artistic matters.

“The critic and one-time librettist Philip Hensher writes that ‘under the guidance of her repulsive racial-theorist son-in-law [Chamberlain]... Cosima tried to turn Bayreuth into a centre for the cult of German purity.’ Thus, he continues, ‘By the time she died, Wagner's reputation was ... at the forefront of a terrible political dynamism: antique stagings of his works were presented to audiences of Brownshirts.’ The close association of the festival with Hitler and the Nazis during the 1930s was much more the work of Winifred—an overt Hitler supporter—than of Cosima, though Hensher asserts that ‘Cosima was as much to blame as anyone’…

“In the immediate aftermath of Cosima's death, some writers heaped copious praise on her….^. Hensher's judgement: "Wagner was a genius, but also a fairly appalling human being. Cosima was just an appalling human being."^[