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Das Judenthum In Der Mozart Essay

Decent Essays

Before we dive into the controversies surrounding Richard Wagner and how we should view him, we first need to grasp an understanding of who Wagner really was. Wagner was a German composer, theater director, and conductor who was well known for his operas that were later classified as “music dramas”. Wagner’s operas, politics, beliefs, writings, and unorthodox lifestyle made him quite the controversial figure during his lifetime. Through one of his most controversial pieces, “Das Judenthun in der Musik” Wagner has developed himself into a person who could be viewed separately with his music because more than just his music had a major impact on the world.
Robert Wagner’s “Das Judenthum in der Musik” is an essay that basically attacks Jews and also attacks musical composers particularly Giancomo Meyerbeer and Felix Mendelssohn which is regarded to by many as a significant landmark of German Anti-Semitism. Wagner elaborates how that Jews were unable to speak European languages properly and how the speech of the Jews sounded like “intolerably jumbled blabber” and a “creaking, squeaking, buzzing snuffle”. Wagner attacked Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer in his essay saying that Mendelssohn’s conservative style was cramping the potential of German music and was “sweet and tinkling without depth”. Meyerbeer was savagely attacked for the …show more content…

Wagner was one of the few composer’s Adolf Hitler allowed during the Nazi era and possibly his favorite. Hitler felt a strong bond to Wagner and has even been exclaimed that Hitler’s vision of Germany was manifested in the composer’s music. The Nazi Party heavily promoted Wagner’s operas that had a reflection on a nationalistic world view that displays Nazism which was used for Nazi

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