The "Ban" on Parsifal 1939-1945
ccording to the controversial biography of Wagner by Robert W. Gutman 1,
Parsifal, more than the Ring, was the gospel of National Socialism . Gutman interpreted this work in terms of Wagner's
later writings, the so-called regeneration essays. He writes, surveying the world from the heights of Monsalvat, the Grail community in
Parsifal was alarmed to observe natural selection working against its distinctive Aryanism... The knights were confronted with an enemy gaining
upon them every day. Here was the decisive racial crisis that grew into an uncompromising struggle for power.... Parsifal is an enactment of the
Aryan's plight, struggle and hope for redemption...
utman probably found the clue to this analysis in the writings of Theodor Adorno 2,
who had seen in Parsifal a master-race agenda. As members of the "Bayreuth Circle" 3 had done in
the 1880s and 1890s, Adorno saw the work in the context set by Wagner's regeneration essays, as published in the Bayreuther
Blätter 4. Gutman might also have been influenced by the claim that Adolf Hitler took a very narrow view of the work in terms
of blood, regeneration and selective compassion (see Rauschning's Conversations with Adolf Hitler or Gespräche
mit Hitler, 1939, while keeping in mind that modern historians, such as Hitler's biographer Ian Kershaw, regard this book as unreliable).
Chronology
he first problem with Gutman's interpretation that has been pointed out in the wake of his book,
and in the venomous debate surrounding the subsequent articles by Hartmut Zelinsky and books by his followers such as Marc Weiner, is the gestation of the work
over decades: the story of Parsifal was worked out in detail already in the Prose Draft of 1865 and already
there, the subject of the story is redemption and not regeneration. The first of the so-called "regeneration" articles (Religion and Art) appeared 13
years later. This fact did not inhibit Gutman or others in trying to interpret Parsifal as the embodiment of ideas explored in those articles. Although
one might speculate that Wagner's ideas about regeneration and blood had begun to form before 1865, there is no evidence to support such a speculation. The
content of those essays was influenced by Darwin, amongst others, whom Wagner had not read by 1865: therefore the suggestion that Wagner might have introduced a
subtext about social Darwinism into his last opera is simply ludicrous. There have been attempts to detect some interests of Wagner's last decade, such as
vegetarianism, between the lines of his (1877) libretto for Parsifal but even this is doubtful.
detailed comparison of the opera's libretto with the 1865 Prose
Draft shows no major differences: surprisingly little was changed. Although Wagner's preoccupations, concerns and interests changed between 1865 and 1882, it is
evident that none of this led him to change the subject of his last opera: the original theme of redemption was not replaced by one about regeneration or
anything else. It needs to be said (since many writers have assumed the opposite) that Wagner's world-view was volatile rather than static: he was always forming
new opinions in response to what he recently had read or discussed with someone; although his respect for Schopenhauer never diminished. It should also be noted
that Wagner frequently re-interpreted his earlier work in the light of new ideas and perspectives. In the 1870's such re-interpretation included even works such
as Götterdämmerung and Parsifal that were unfinished.
nlike the Bayreuth circle of the late 19th century, today we are less likely to see the work in terms of the
regeneration essays; although it was often seen against this background during the 20th century. With better knowledge of how
the work actually developed, from its genesis in the late 1850's to the completion of the poem (libretto) on 19 April 1877, it
seems highly unlikely that the influences that Wagner absorbed, digested and finally presented in the essays of his last years, were significant in determining
the ideal content of the work, which had been almost entirely defined by August 1865. For example, Wagner first met Count Gobineau in
1876 (Cosima's Diary, entry for 30 November) and only after meeting Gobineau again in 1880 did Wagner begin to study his writings5. Therefore it is not possible, as Gutman asserted, that Gobineau's racist ideas could have
influenced Wagner before he wrote the detailed Prose Draft of 1865, or even the second one of 1877. Nor is it likely that
Wagner had independently developed ideas similar to those of Count Gobineau, since there is evidence both in Cosima's Diaries and in her correspondence
with Gobineau, that Wagner had violently disagreed with his racial theories.
herefore it seems, to this writer at least, that much debate about Parsifal -- from Adorno (writing in
the 1930's) through Gutman (writing in the 1960's) to some of the more hysterical commentators of recent decades -- has been mistakenly concerned with the ideas
about regeneration that preoccupied Wagner while he was finishing an opera that had been worked out in some detail decades earlier. It might be argued that the
theme of regeneration is incidental to Parsifal -- arguably less central than it is to Lohengrin, which also ends with a restoration --
although there is a consensus that Wagner's last opera is about redemption and compassion. Most of the criticism and commentary concerning Parsifal in
recent decades has taken for granted that the work was inspired by the ideas of Darwin and Gobineau (both unknown to Wagner when he wrote his 1865 Prose Draft) and that (as also has been claimed for Die Meistersinger), the opera contains a hidden anti-Semitic subtext;
so well hidden, in fact, that it never occurred to the Nazi's that such a subtext might be present.
Rejection by the Nazi Regime?
he second problem is the attitude shown by the Nazi party towards Parsifal in the 3rd
Reich, especially if as Robert R. Gibson has proposed a ban was enforced during the war years. If as Gutman asserts, this work was the gospel of National
Socialism , why should it have been suppressed or discouraged by the Nazi's? Was it because the ideologues of the Nazi party did not share Hitler's enthusiasm
for this work? Or was it perhaps that they found messages in the work that they disliked, and this dislike outweighed the regeneration message -- which might
have been of interest to them -- that recently (1937) had been abhorred by their opponent Adorno?
ncidentally, it was another work entirely that the Völkischer Beobachter had hailed as the gospel of
the Nazi movement : the Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1897-98) by Houston Stewart Chamberlain — at that time a central figure in the
"Bayreuth Circle" during its second (Wilhelminist) stage, who married Eva Wagner in 1907, thus becoming the posthumous son-in-law of Richard. (H.S. Chamberlain
never met Richard Wagner; the nearest he came was to see Wagner across a Bayreuth restaurant).
Unacceptable Content
o what are the messages carried by Wagner's opera that might have led to a ban on performances of
Parsifal in the period 1939-1945, and its absence in these years from Hitler's Bayreuth? Which of these messages could have been the real problem and
which secondary objections? It is even possible that the arguments with which the Nazi ideologues persuaded Hitler -- if in fact they were able to do so -- were
not the real reasons for them wanting to forbid wartime performances of the work. In a paper delivered at the Wagner symposium in Adelaide last year 6, Robert R. Gibson suggested the following.
The Underlying Message of Pacifism
irstly, although it portrays a warrior caste of Grail Knights, there is in Parsifal an underlying
message of pacifism. At key moments in the work, the protagonist is disarmed. In the first act, Parsifal is upbraided for killing a swan, and as a sign of his
growing awareness, breaks his bow and throws away his arrows. In the third act, he arrives as an armed knight, but allows his armour to be removed, to be
replaced by the mantle of the Grail brotherhood, on which appears the emblem of the dove, a symbol of peace. Only then can he return to the shrine of Monsalvat.
ven in the second act, which ends in a violent conflict between Parsifal and the domain of Klingsor, the only destructive act in that conflict on the part of the
hero, is to grasp the spear and to make the sign of the cross. (In fact, his passivity throughout the opera does not commend him as an Aryan hero — in contrast
to Siegfried). The spear itself, a holy relic, will not allow itself to be used as a weapon: when Klingsor throws
it at Parsifal, the spear pauses above his head. Parsifal then
shows himself more worthy than Amfortas to be guardian of the holy relic by not bearing it as a weapon (denn nicht ihn selberdurft' ich führen im Streite ). This pacifist message alone would be sufficient reason, the Nazi ideologues could have argued, to
suppress the work at least until the end of the war.
The Dominant Theme of Compassion
econdly, the primary message of the opera is about compassion, scarcely an element of
Nazi ideology. It has been regarded as a feminine attribute, not as belonging to the masculine ideal of the Aryan male. One of principal ideologues of the Nazi
movement, Alfred Rosenberg, compared Wagner's works as follows:
The essence of all Nordic western art has been revealed in Richard Wagner. It shows that the Nordic
soul is not contemplative, that it does not lose itself in an individualistic psychology. Rather, it experiences the willed, cosmic, spiritual laws, and shapes
our art spiritually and architectonically. Richard Wagner is one of those artists in whom three factors coincide, each of which form a part of our entire
artistic life: the Nordic ideal of beauty as it appears outwardly in Lohengrin and Siegfried, linked to deepest feeling for
nature; the inner will of man in Tristan und Isolde; and the struggle for the highest value of Nordic western man: heroic honour, linked with
inner truthfulness. This inner ideal of beauty is realised in Wotan, in King Mark and in Hans Sachs. Conversely, Parsifal is a strongly
emphasized weakening of the will in favour of an adoptive value. 
[Mythus des XX. Jahrhunderts, 1930]
Role Models for the Reich
hirdly, the women portrayed in the opera are no better role models for the women of the 3rd Reich, than Parsifal is exemplary of the Aryan male ideal. His mother Herzeleide is
a war widow who attempts to shield her son from weapons and fighting, and dies of a broken heart when he leaves her in pursuit of a band of knights. Kundry is obviously a foreign element but (despite the subsequent analysis of Weiner in which she becomes an anti-Semitic
stereotype), Wagner's sympathetic treatment of this degenerate, predatory female might not have appealed to the ideologues.
ourthly, the ban occurred at a time when the National Socialist party was attempting to suppress homosexuality.
The SS were forbidden to touch one another, but in the opera we see a community of male warriors who embrace during their ceremonies.
rom 1934 to 1937 there was a series of cloister trials in which the monks of German monasteries were
tried for alleged homosexual activities. In a broadcast speech in May 1937, Joseph Goebbels denounced the unnatural life of unmarried priests and monks, and he
described monasteries as breeding places of vile homosexuality . Given the Nazi campaign against the Church and in particular the attempts to discredit
monasteries and other religious communities, it is not surprising that an opera in which an all-male religious community triumphs over adversity through the
recovery of a phallic symbol would be unwanted.
The Antithesis of Totalitarian Art
inally, although Parsifal is less complex than the Ring, it is still a multilayered,
multidimensional, opaque work that allows of many different interpretations. In that respect, it is the antithesis of totalitarian art. The latter is
characterized by simple messages, unambiguous images and uncomplicated archetypes. Even if Parsifal can be interpreted as a homage to Aryan supremacy,
this objective is obscured by other, more obvious messages that would have disturbed Nazi ideologues. We see a youth destroy his weapons, renounce sexual union
with a woman and join an enclosed, all-male, religious community. In short, doing everything that a good Aryan youth of the 1930's was not supposed to do.
Of Wieland's inaugural productions of the Ring and Parsifal it was,
inevitably, his treatment of the latter that was most provocative. No other work had been so closely associated with the Bayreuth tradition. The new staging effected by Tietjen, Roller and Wieland from 1934 had ... provoked furious opposition. The annual
Parsifal ritual had come to an abrupt end in 1939 and the work had since been but seldom performed. Wieland told Goléa, It's always a thorn in
the flesh of the powers that be -- not just the religious [authorities] but also the Nazis. Hitler had effectively banned
Parsifal. A similar mentality prevailed in the GDR after the war. That was why Parsifal was no longer performed there. The time was
ripe for a production that would make a decisive break with the past. 
|

In his innovative staging of Parsifal, Wieland Wagner sustained a mystic spiritual aura in which the architecture of the Grail temple was merely
suggested. Rather than marching in procession, the knights emerged from the dark edges of the stage as a suddenly visible ring closing in around the
table.
|
True to his intentions, Wieland approached Parsifal through an analytic scenario which
he set out as "Parsifal's Cross: A Psychological Pattern". This was a diagram showing how the opera's events moved towards and
then away from the peripeteia [turning point] of Kundry's kiss, and were symmetrically related
to each other. But what struck most visitors in 1951 was not the psychology of the production but its mystic spiritual aura. In the dim, soft light the eye
had to search for the barest intimations of place -- four dull-gold vertical brushstrokes indicating the pillars of the Grail temple, a spider's web
tracery for Klingsor's domain -- and for the shadowy forms of the singers. The work had been transformed into a dream
play.
In Tradition and Innovation Wieland explained that the staging of Parsifal required mystical expression of a very complex state of
the soul, rooted in the unreal, grasped only by intuition , and that this was what he provided. The impact of the production was as well described by
its enemies as by its friends: a symphony in gloom, a formless play of patterns and shadows which dispenses with individual dramatic relationships,
confines itself exclusively to symbols and thereby becomes wearisome. Those in the other camp, such as Ernest Newman, would not have faulted the
description, insisting only that the whole effect was not 'wearisome' but 'magical'. 
Wagner and the Art of the Theatre, Patrick Carnegy, Yale 2006, page 288.
|
Postscript
esearch into the records of opera houses within the Third Reich carried out by Katherine R. Syer has shown that
there were, in fact, both staged and concert performances of Parsifal during the war years. There is a recording (issued on CD by Preiser Records,
90261) of the third act of the opera in a concert performance given in Berlin on 31st March 1942.
Parsifal was not performed in Munich during the war but it was in von Schirach's Vienna. In
Hamburg, Parsifal was performed annually from the 1929/30 season until that of 1942/43, on average three times per season; in 1936, a new production
directed by Oscar Fritz Schuh and designed by Emil Preetorius ran for seven performances. In Frankfurt, which fell within Goebbels' sphere [as head of the
Reich Chamber of Culture], Parsifal had been performed annually in the period between the wars, invariably around Easter time. Parsifal
suddenly disappeared from the Frankfurt program in 1940, only to resurface in 1941, 1942 and 1943. In Dresden, Parsifal was performed every season
from 1914 to 1944 inclusive, with the number of annual performances fixed at four from 1933 to 1944. 
[Parsifal on Stage, William Kinderman and Katherine R. Syer, Camden House 2005, page 305.]
yer goes on to state that Wolfgang Wagner had a conversation with Hitler in 1940 in which, reportedly, the Führer
stated his wish for a more abstract and indeterminate approach in future stagings of Parsifal. However, in the passage that Syer quotes from Spotts'
Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, an entry from Goebbels' diary is inaccurately reported. This error has been corrected by John Deathridge:
What Goebbels actually dictated for his diary on 22 November 1941 was this: "Contrary to what has
been reported to me, the Führer does not want Parsifal to be performed solely in Bayreuth again; he only means that one should modernize the décor and
costumes of Parsifal somewhat. Either we have to get away from this Christian mystical style, or Parsifal in the long run won't be able to
retain its place in the modern repertory. The Führer gives me several suggestions, which I will immediately put into effect." 
[Wagner Beyond Good and Evil, John Deathridge, Univ. of California Press 2008, pages
173-4.]
herefore we must conclude that, even though some Nazi idealogues had reservations about Parsifal and
despite Hitler's dislike of the "Christian mystical style" in which it had until then always been presented on stage, both Hitler and Goebbels were looking
forward to new productions of the opera after the war. Nike Wagner's suggestion (The Wagners, page 139), that Hitler wanted Alfred Rosenberg to rewrite
the text should not be taken as hard fact, although we can assume that Rosenberg would have done so if asked. She reports her father, Wieland, as saying, "Hitler
virtually prohibited Parsifal". Like much else in Nike Wagner's book, this should be taken with a pinch of salt. Virtually or otherwise, there is no
evidence that Hitler prohibited Parsifal at any time. It is possible that certain of his subordinates, on the basis of some hint from Hitler,
discouraged performances of Parsifal because its pacifistic message was considered unsuitable for the war years. But that would be speculation and in
the absence of evidence for a ban, and in the presence of evidence of some performances during the war, we can only conclude that there was no ban on
Parsifal.
Footnote 1: Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind and His Music; Robert Gutman, 1968.
Footnote 2: Versuch über Wagner; Theodor Adorno, 1952; English translation by Rodney Livingstone, In Search of Wagner,
1981.
Footnote 3: The definitive work on the "Bayreuth Circle" is Der Bayreuther Kreis von seiner Entstehung bis zum Ausgang der Wilhelminischen
Ära. Wagnerkult und Kulturreform im Geiste völkischer Weltanschauung; Winfried Schüler, Aschendorff, Münster 1971. To the extent that the "Bayreuth Circle"
had any influence, it was exerted through a publication that Richard Wagner had established in his last years, the Bayreuther Blätter. Wagner appointed
Hans von Wolzogen as editor, in which post he remained until his death in 1938, at which the journal ceased to be published. The Bayreuther Blätter has
been described as the publication forum for the "Bayreuth Circle"; although it might be more accurate to regard the list of authors, whose articles were selected
by von Wolzogen for publication in the Blätter, as defining the membership of the otherwise insubstantial group known as the "Bayreuth
Circle". Although the continuity of the editorship maintained a certain continuity also in the content of the journal, Schüler was able to distinguish three
distinct stages or generations in the "Circle".
Footnote 4: Schüler pointed out that Richard Wagner's ideas about redemption and regeneration culminated in Parsifal. It was therefore
natural that, after the publication of Wagner's Religion and Art and a series of related articles in the Blätter, other authors should take up
Wagner's ideas about redemption and regeneration in later issues of the journal. Their articles almost invariably related those ideas to Parsifal. The
subsequent history of articles relating to Parsifal and the theme of mankind's potential regeneration has been documented by Mary A. Cicora in
Parsifal Reception in the Bayreuther Blätter. In this study, based on Dr. Cicora's doctoral dissertation, the subtly different perspectives of the
"Bayreuth Circle" (that is, the authors who published in the Blätter) are illustrated by selections from articles in each of the three stages of the
"Circle".
Footnote 5: This subject is discussed in depth by the editor of the Wagner- Gobineau correspondence, Eric Eugène, in Wagner et Gobineau:
Existe-t-il un racisme wagnérien?; Le Cherche midi, Paris, 1998.
Footnote 6: Published in Wagner vol.20, number 2, pages 78-87. The paper was originally given at the "Wagner at the Millenium" symposium
held at the University of Adelaide, South Australia, 25-27 November 1998.
|