The Branding of Wagner: Tim Blanning assesses three new publications, praising illuminating details while cautioning against exaggeration

Reviews of Nicholas Vazsonyi, Richard Wagner: Self-Promotion and the Making of a Brand (Cambridge University Press, 2010); Oliver Hilmes, Cosima Wagner: The Lady of Bayreuth, tr. Stewart Spencer (Yale University Press, 2010); Edward R. Haymes, Wagner’s Ring in 1848: New Translations of ‘The Nibelung Myth’ and ‘Siegfried’s Death’ (Camden House, 2010).

March 2011, Volume 5, Number 1, 109–12.

During Wagner’s lifetime, Germany changed more rapidly and radically than at any time in human history, at least up until that point. In 1813 it was a social and economic backwater, its fragmented territories so many French colonies; by 1883 the German Empire was the most prosperous and powerful state in continental Europe, and arguably the world. With wealth and power came a massive expansion in the public sphere, driven by an increase in literacy: at the beginning of the century, only about a third of the population could read; by the end almost everyone could do so.