Eric Doughney, Winifred Wagner: Wahnfried, Politics and Individuation

The name Winifred Wagner is heavy with negative meaning. Her personal association with Adolf Hitler, the Nazification of the Bayreuth Festival, and the consequent estrangement from her family have condemned the English-born orphan and wife of Richard Wagner’s son, Siegfried, to be a key figure in the nexus comprising Wagner, Bayreuth, Hitler and Nazism. Many find it difficult to uncouple the individual from the politics with which she has become so closely identified. Understandably so, since it is not easy to be compassionate about a person who supported such an ideology as Nazism. However, following Brigitte Hamann’s respected biography of Winifred, an argument can be made in favour of suggesting that, contrary to popular belief, politics, as such, were ancillary to what for Winifred was an agenda rooted in personal need.