Olivia: What if the same music that became the anthem for the Third Reich also helped inspire the founding of the modern state of Israel? Jackson: Wait, what? That sounds completely impossible. You’re talking about Richard Wagner, right? The guy whose name is practically synonymous with Nazism? Olivia: The very same. It sounds like a contradiction that can’t be resolved, but it’s at the heart of the most complex and dangerous artistic legacy in modern history. And that legacy is the subject of Alex Ross's monumental book, Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music. Jackson: Right, and Ross is the celebrated music critic for The New Yorker. This book was a massive undertaking, taking him over a decade to write, and it's been hailed by critics as this dizzying, engrossing, and sometimes overwhelming exploration of how one composer’s shadow looms over all of modern culture. Olivia: Exactly. And to understand that shadow, we have to start with the most dramatic intellectual breakup of the 19th century. It’s a story that reveals the seductive and destructive power of Wagner’s art.

Jackson: I’m guessing this involves the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. I know they had a famous falling out, but I always pictured it as some dry, academic debate. Olivia: Oh, it was anything but dry. Ross paints it as this epic human drama. In the beginning, Nietzsche was Wagner’s biggest fanboy. He was a brilliant young philologist who saw Wagner not just as a composer, but as a cultural messiah who could save German culture from mediocrity. Jackson: So Nietzsche is basically his intellectual hype man? What did he see in Wagner that was so revolutionary? Olivia: He saw the living embodiment of his own philosophy. Nietzsche’s first book, The Birth of Tragedy, argues that great art comes from a fusion of two forces: the Apollonian, which is all about order, reason, and form; and the Dionysian, which is about chaos, emotion, and intoxication. For Nietzsche, Wagner's operas were the first art form since the ancient Greeks to perfectly fuse these two. He believed, and this is a famous quote from that book, "Only as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence and the world eternally justified." Art was everything. Jackson: Okay, so it's a total hero-worship. But breakups are always messier. What started the cracks? You can't go from that to calling your hero a disease, which I think Nietzsche later did. Olivia: The first major crack appeared at the very event that should have been their crowning glory: the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876, where Wagner premiered his entire Ring cycle. Nietzsche went there expecting a sacred, transformative artistic ritual. Instead, he found a commercialized spectacle. Jackson: Let me guess, overpriced merch and terrible food? Olivia: You’re not far off! Ross describes how Nietzsche was disgusted by the tacky souvenirs—Wagner’s face on beer mugs and cigar boxes. He found the audience to be "bored, unmusical" socialites who were there to be seen, not to be transformed. He felt the whole thing had been "translated into German," meaning it had become provincial and nationalistic, losing its universal power. He wrote in his diary, "I no longer recognized anything, I scarcely recognized Wagner." Jackson: That's heartbreaking. It's like seeing your favorite indie band sell out and play the Super Bowl halftime show. But was it just about the festival? Olivia: That was the emotional break, but the philosophical one ran deeper. It came with Wagner's final opera, Parsifal. Wagner framed it as a story of Christian-style redemption through compassion, or Mitleid. For Nietzsche, this was the ultimate betrayal. He was developing his philosophy of the "will to power" and the Übermensch—the idea that humanity should overcome traditional morality and affirm life in all its chaotic glory. He saw compassion as a life-denying, weak-willed emotion. Wagner, his former Dionysian hero, had retreated into what Nietzsche saw as a kind of spiritual sickness. Jackson: Wow. So to become himself, he had to destroy his idol. That's intense. It's like he was Brünnhilde, the Valkyrie in the Ring, and Wagner both woke him and wounded him. Olivia: It’s amazing you say that. He even used that line himself to describe their relationship: "He who woke me has wounded me!" This intense struggle, this "agon" as the Greeks would call it, is the perfect lens for understanding the dual nature of Wagner's power. He could inspire genius, but that inspiration could be so overwhelming it had to be violently rejected. Jackson: And it’s that same dual nature, that power, that gets picked up by forces far beyond philosophy. Olivia: Exactly. The power to inspire both creation and destruction plays out on the world stage in the most shocking way imaginable. Which brings us back to our opening paradox.

Jackson: Right. I'm still stuck on this. How did Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, get inspired by Wagner, a notorious antisemite who wrote the disgusting essay 'Jewishness in Music'? Olivia: It’s one of the most staggering stories in the book. Herzl was a thoroughly assimilated Viennese Jewish journalist and playwright. He believed in assimilation, until he was sent to Paris to cover the Dreyfus Affair in the 1890s. He saw a civilized nation descend into an antisemitic mob, and he had a terrifying realization: assimilation would never work. The Jews needed a homeland. Jackson: Okay, but where does Wagner come in? Olivia: At that very moment of crisis, Herzl went to see Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser in Paris. And he had an epiphany. He saw the power of myth, of grand spectacle, of a collective, almost religious artistic experience. He realized that to build a nation, you didn't just need politics and money; you needed a powerful, unifying myth. And Wagner, for him, was the master mythmaker. He wrote in his diary that the future Jewish state would have "magnificent auditoriums" and "majestic processional marches," all on a Wagnerian scale. Jackson: So he wasn't ignoring the antisemitism, he was... what? Stealing Wagner's fire? Using the master's tools to build his own house? Olivia: Precisely. Ross, drawing on the work of W. E. B. Du Bois, calls it a form of "double consciousness." Herzl was a man looking at his own people through the eyes of a hostile European culture. He decided to appropriate the most powerful cultural tool of that dominant culture—Wagner's art—and wield it for his own people's liberation. He saw Wagner's art as a "mythic hoard" to be claimed. At the Second Zionist Congress, they even played music from Tannhäuser. Jackson: That's a powerful and defiant act. It’s so complex. But then... there's the other side of the coin. The one we all know. Hitler. Olivia: And this is where the story turns from complex to chilling. For Hitler, there was no "double consciousness." There was no need to appropriate or reinterpret. He was, in his mind, Wagner's true heir. His obsession started in his youth in Austria. He was a failed artist who found his identity in Wagner's operas. Jackson: I’ve heard the story about him seeing the opera Rienzi and having this political epiphany, declaring "In that hour it began." Is that true? Olivia: Ross points out that the story is a bit shaky and likely exaggerated by Hitler himself for dramatic effect. But the core of it is true: Hitler was utterly consumed by Wagner. He saw himself in the heroic figures—the lonely, misunderstood knight Lohengrin, or the heroic Siegfried who forges a sword to save his people. He wrote in Mein Kampf about his first time seeing Lohengrin, saying his "youthful enthusiasm for the Bayreuth master knew no bounds." Jackson: And he didn't have to grapple with the antisemitism. He saw it not as a bug, but as a feature. Olivia: Exactly. For Hitler, Wagner's art was a direct affirmation of his worldview. The antisemitic essay 'Jewishness in Music' wasn't a flaw to be overlooked; it was a foundational text. The Nazi propaganda machine explicitly linked Wagner to their ideology. After Germany's defeat in World War I, the popular "stab-in-the-back" legend—the idea that Germany was betrayed from within by Jews and socialists—was literally framed using the story of Siegfried's murder by the treacherous Hagen from the Ring cycle. Jackson: So one man, Herzl, sees the Ring and finds a story of a people claiming their destiny. Another man, Hitler, sees the same story and finds a justification for racial hatred and revenge. Olivia: And the Nazis turned Bayreuth, Wagner's festival, into a party shrine. They twisted his call for "holy German art" into a slogan for racial purity. The same music, the same myths, were used to fuel two completely opposite dreams.

Jackson: So we have this one artist whose work is a 'magnifying mirror,' as Ross says. It reflects the best and worst of us. Nietzsche saw the potential for a new philosophy in it. Herzl saw the blueprint for a nation. And Hitler saw a justification for genocide. Olivia: And that's the unresolvable wound of Wagnerism. The art is so powerful it can be anything to anyone. It's a 'Ring of Power'—it grants immense vision, but it's also cursed. Ross doesn't offer an easy answer. He leaves us with that struggle, that "agon." Jackson: It makes you question how we engage with any powerful art made by flawed people. Can you ever truly separate the art from the artist? Or does the art itself carry the artist's poison, just waiting for the right person to unlock it? Olivia: That's the question at the heart of the book. And it’s a question with no simple answer. Ross concludes with a powerful thought: 'When we look at Wagner, we are gazing into a magnifying mirror of the soul of the human species. What we hate in it, we hate in ourselves; what we love in it, we love in ourselves also.' Jackson: Wow. That's a heavy, but incredible, place to end. It forces you to look inward. For our listeners, what’s your take? Can you separate the art from the artist, especially when the stakes are this high? Let us know your thoughts on our social channels. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.