Our Man in Vienna

The Way We Want it to Be

 

Historian Ian Kershaw claims that Hitler’s appreciation of Wagner’s operas was more induced by the dramatic scenography of the productions he attended, rather than by the music. Indeed the productions of the Vienna Opera House consisted of visual, as well as musical aspects.

Wagner certainly influenced Hitler in staging and set design. However, coming to the conclusion that Hitler’s love of Wagner was more visual than auditory is absurd. Obviously, he spent hours and hours listening, as well as viewing.Indeed Nazi rallies were staged like Wagner operas.They were both visual and musical extravaganzas. Wagner’s music was used as foreground and background to National Socialism. You could call it theme music. It simply fit in.

Wagner’s music was part of this mass-murderer’s makeup. Does it somehow soften his monstrous crimes? Hitler, like all mass-murderers, was born on Planet Earth. In any description or analysis accuracy is essential. Hitler’s musical tastes do not in any way lessen the criminality of his actions.

Wagner’s spirit pervaded and permeated the Third Reich, and what’s more Wagner was an anti-Semite to boot.

Due to the grace of early birth Wagner couldn’t have chosen to be on board. If he had been a contemporary of his great admirer, who knows!

What’s more, the expressionist quality of Hitler’s oratory and gestures had a Wagnerian quality. Call his speechmaking a parody, but a parody is somehow connected to the original.

 

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Heinrich Himmler:
“When we find children of good blood in other nations
that physically resemble our own, we will abduct them and present them
to loyal childless couples to be brought up as good Germans.”

Vladimir Putin?
“other nations” = “the Ukraine”
“good Germans = “good Russians

 

 

– Herbert Kuhner