Bayreuth plans Nazi documentation centre
OrchestrasThe town of Bayreuth is planning a Nazi documentation centre. It will be housed in the former mansion of the British antisemitic polemicist Houston Stewart Chamberlain, a significant influence on Richard Wagner and Adolf Hitler.
The planned centre is a municipal act of remembrance for which the town has allocated 11.5 million Euros. It has nothing to do with the Bayreuth Festival or its governing Wagner family, which avoid acts of self-reflection.
‘The Wahnfried House has always been anti-Semitic,’ says Sven Friedrich, director of the Wagner Museum Bayreuth and co-initiator of the NS Documentation Centre.
pictured: Hitler with Furtwängler, backstage in Bayreuth
Norman, you neglect to mention the rather remarkable Denkmal on the Festspielhaus grounds, featuring homages/tributes to the many Jewish artists who contributed their gifts and skills to the festival. Those who were later executed were commemorated with individual memorials; those who were banned but survived the worst share their stones of rememberances with others. Hardly an avoidance of self-reflection, and thanks largely to Katharina Wagner. The museum at Haus Wahnfried is likewise honest in its presentations of the Nazi era.
I may be misinterpreting, but this story seems to present the Documentation Centre as a bad thing. There are Nazi Documentation Centres in other parts of Germany, including Nuremberg, which lay out what went on there during the Nazi regime. They are all publicly funded and represent admissions.
Is it not possible that that is precisely what is aimed at in Bayreuth, and using the building in question may help erase its former associations? And is is not possible that the role of the Festival and the role of specific members of the Wagner family will be addressed in the Centre?
Surely the members of the Wagner family who associated with Hitler are all dead. The notion that the existing family avoids all acts of self-reflection seems like an accusation that includes the contention that children are responsible for the sins of their forbears. An attitude responsible for a lot of the wars both historical and current.