Jonas Karlsson, Bernhard Loeser and the Berlin Premiere of ‘Die Meistersinger’

Students of Wagner will be familiar with the long list of Jews who were supportive of the composer’s cause: Karl Tausig, Heinrich Porges, Joseph Rubinstein, Angelo Neumann and Hermann Levi are the names most frequently mentioned. But there are others who have been almost universally neglected. Hardly any attention has been given to George Davidsohn, for instance, who was not only a central figure in the Berlin Wagner Society, and worked unremittingly to secure financial support for the projected festival in Bayreuth, but also the founder, owner and editor of a popular daily newspaper, the Berliner Börsen-Courier, which championed Wagner with a zealotry unmatched by any other organ of the German press. Even more forgotten today is Bernhard Loeser, a wealthy tobacco merchant whose unstinting generosity benefited not only Wagner but many other artists and charity organisations too.