This book presents an absorbing account of the bizarre relationship between the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the composer Richard Wagner, and Wagner's mistresslater wifeCosima. It sheds intriguing light on Nietzsche's early writings, showing how they were subverted by the Wagners' pre-fascist ideology.

Nietzsche and Wagner: A Lesson in Subjugation

Biographies & Memoirs

Köhler, Joachim

Arts & Literature

Yale University Press

More than a century after his death in 1900, Nietzsche remains a seminal figure in the history of European intellectual life. Celebrated as a liberator by some, maligned as a pernicious influence by others, he was the subject of controversy during his lifetime, pursuing a hedonistic individualism and espousing concepts such as the Superman and the Will to Power until he died after a decade of institutionalized insanity. In this groundbreaking biography, Joachim Köhler seeks for the first time to understand Nietzsche’s philosophy through a reconstruction of his inner life. In a revealing reinterpretation of his letters, diaries, and writings, Köhler shows that Nietzsche’s suppressed homosexuality, generating a hatred of Christianity and conventional morality, was a central influence on his work. Further, Köhler argues, his philosophical position was fundamentally compromised by the concealment of his forbidden sexual desire. Throughout his life, the unhappy genius was also plagued by horrible nightmares, stemming from his much-loved father’s death, which led to a profoundly disturbed conscience and an intense loathing of metaphysics. Seeking to disguise the truth of his innermost torments, Nietzsche contrived the persona of Zarathustra. The story of the great Persian philosopher, contends Köhler, reveals Nietzsche’s own suppression and dionysiac liberation, and presents the culmination of his secret yearnings in the new myth of the Superman who, in his naked beauty, resembled the gods of classical Greece.

Zarathustra's Secret

Köhler, Joachirn

History

In this new biography of Richard Wagner, Joachim Köhler draws on social and political analysis, documentary interpretation, and psychological insights to paint a rounded picture of Wagner as both a controversial historical phenomenon and a complex human being. Köhler’s reading of the letters, diaries, and other documents of the main protagonists, some of them unfamiliar even to seasoned Wagnerians, results in some breathtaking but convincing reappraisals. He examines Wagner’s love affairs with Jessie Laussot, Mathilde Wesendonck, and Judith Gautier and assesses their lasting emotional effect. He re-evaluates Wagner’s relationships with his mother, step-father, sister, and―most revealingly―his wife, Cosima, a relationship seen as based on fear rather than love. Köhler explores the philosophical roots of Wagner’s work, which the composer himself deliberately obfuscated. And he analyzes Wagner’s relationship with King Ludwig, whom Wagner is revealed to have blackmailed, and with Nietzsche, whom he tried to destroy. The traumas of his youth haunted Wagner throughout his life, as his emotional development underlay his notorious anti-semitism. Köhler’s interpretation of Wagner’s dreams, as recorded in Cosima’s diaries, offers astonishing insights into the paranoia and insecurity of a man who was one of the leading composers of his age.

Richard Wagner: The Last of the Titans

This book presents an absorbing account of the bizarre and fluctuating relationship between the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the composer Richard Wagner, and his wife Cosima. Nietzsche was 25 when he first met Wagner and his 32-year-old mistress Cosima (daughter of Franz Liszt and at that time wife of the conductor Hans von Bülow) in May 1869. The relationship survived on a combination of mutual intellectual admiration―dominated by the bullying Wagner―and erotic jealousy until the composer’s death in 1883 and the philosopher’s own descent into madness six years later.The book, first published in German in 1996, brings this turbulent relationship vividly to life. Joachim Köhler shows for the first time how their traumatized childhoods bound Nietzsche and Cosima in submission to the demonic, aging Wagner, how Nietzsche was enticed into the Bayreuth labyrinth, entrapped in its culture wars and used as a tool in its sectarianism and antisemitism. The book sheds new light on Nietzsche’s early writings, revealing them subverted by Wagner to parade his own ideas of German superiority, of the domination of the masses by a few chosen geniuses, and of the supremacy of art and aesthetics over morals and humanity. The sources of Nietzsche’s “Superman” and “Will to Power” are traced to the pre-fascist ideology of Richard and Cosima Wagner, an ideology later uncomprehendingly idolized by Hitler’s Reich.

Nietzsche and Wagner

More than a century after his death in 1900, Nietzsche remains a seminal figure in the history of European intellectual life. Celebrated as a liberator by some, maligned as a pernicious influence by others, he was the subject of controversy during his lifetime, pursuing a hedonistic individualism and espousing concepts such as the Superman and the Will to Power until he died after a decade of institutionalized insanity.In this groundbreaking biography, Joachim Köhler seeks for the first time to understand Nietzsche’s philosophy through a reconstruction of his inner life. In a revealing reinterpretation of his letters, diaries, and writings, Köhler shows that Nietzsche’s suppressed homosexuality, generating a hatred of Christianity and conventional morality, was a central influence on his work. Further, Köhler argues, his philosophical position was fundamentally compromised by the concealment of his forbidden sexual desire. Throughout his life, the unhappy genius was also plagued by horrible nightmares, stemming from his much-loved father’s death, which led to a profoundly disturbed conscience and an intense loathing of metaphysics. Seeking to disguise the truth of his innermost torments, Nietzsche contrived the persona of Zarathustra. The story of the great Persian philosopher, contends Köhler, reveals Nietzsche’s own suppression and dionysiac liberation, and presents the culmination of his secret yearnings in the new myth of the Superman who, in his naked beauty, resembled the gods of classical Greece.

Zarathustra’s Secret: The Interior Life of Friedrich Nietzsche

Professionals & Academics

Wagner's Hitler is an important and controversial contribution to the literature on Hitler's Germany.

Wagner's Hitler: The Prophet and His Disciple

Europe

Polity

Der vorliegende Band aus der Reihe historischer Ortsbeschreibungen spiegelt über viele Jahrzehnte das dörfliche Leben der Einwohner der Gemeinde Welgesheim wider. Wesentlicher Bestandteil ist ein Häuserbuch, das aufzeigt, welche Familien ab dem Jahre 1830 in den Häusern lebten. Ergänzend sind zahlreiche Illustrationen, Fotos sowie Abschriften historischer Dokumente enthalten.

Historisches Welgesheim (German Edition)

Hummel, Sandra

Independently published

Der Letzte der Titanen: Richard Wagners Leben und Werk (German Edition)

Reference

Foreign Language Study & Reference

Claassen

Das Aktfoto: Ansichten vom Körper im fotographischen Zeitalter : Ästhetik, Geschichte, Ideologie (German Edition)

Michael Koehler

MICHAEL

Ronald Taylor (translator) , Joachim K?hler

Gisela Barche

Bucher

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