Dagny Beidler, Steadfast and Upstanding: Franz Wilhelm Beidler, Richard Wagner’s Eldest Grandson

July 2016, Volume 10, Number 2, 36–46.

My father, Franz Wilhelm Beidler (FWB), was born in Bayreuth in 1901 to Isolde (née ‘von Bülow’) and Franz Philipp Beidler. His mother was the ‘first child of love’ of Richard Wagner and Cosima von Bülow, born in Munich on 10 April 1865. On the morning of my grandmother’s birth, Wagner was at my great-grandmother Cosima’s bedside while her nominal husband, Hans von Bülow, was occupied with conducting an orchestral rehearsal in preparation for the world premiere of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. The lives of Richard and Cosima required that Hans von Bülow claim paternity of Isolde – all for the sake of simulated respectability. A scandal over an illegitimate child might have cut off the financial umbilical cord connecting Wagner to King Ludwig’s bank account. The triangle experienced some anguished times because of this deception.