Anti-Semitic Wagner letter to be sold in Jerusalem ~ The New Day

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Anti-Semitic Wagner letter to be sold in Jerusalem

A letter written by Hitler's favourite composer Richard Wagner warning about "corrosive" Jewish influence on culture is to be auctioned in Jerusalem.

In the April 1869 letter, the anti-Semitic composer tells French philosopher Edouard Schuré that the French know "very little" about Jews.

Wagner's work contains anti-Semitic and misogynist ideas as well as ideas of racial purity.

His music is not banned in Israel but is not played due to public opposition.

The letter is to go under the hammer at 19:00 local time (16:00 GMT) at the Kedem auction house in Jerusalem with a starting price of $5,000 (£3,600).

In it, Wagner wrote that Jewish assimilation into French society meant that it was harder to see that "corroding influence of the Jewish spirit on modern culture".

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The composer was also the author of an infamous anti-Semitic pamphlet entitled "Judaism in music", written in 1850. In 1869 it was republished under his name.

Richard WagnerImage copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage captionRichard Wagner was Hitler's favourite composer

Wagner would "roll over in his grave" if he knew that a Jew with a beard was going to make money from his letter, Meron Eren from the auction house told AFP.

Despite the effective boycott of Wagner's compositions in Israel, some Israelis would like his music to be played there.

"It's easy to boycott him because most of the people don't listen to his music," Jonathan Livny, head of the Israel Wagner Society told AFP.

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The composer had become a "symbol of the Holocaust", he added.

In 2011 an Israeli orchestra played a Wagner composition in Germany. At the time, Israeli Chamber Orchestra Conductor Roberto Paternostro said that while Wagner's ideology was "terrible", the aim was "to divide the man from his art".

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