Vanessa K. Iacocca, Reciprocal Redemption: Parsifal, Kundry and Shared Compassion as Wagner’s Allegorical Vision for Germany

July 2021, Volume 15, Number 2, 4–22.

Nineteenth-century Germany faced a deluge of social, political, religious and economic upheaval: shifts towards secularisation; the revolutions of 1848–9; the Kulturkampf, or power struggle between the Catholic Church and the state; and the emergence of a market economy. During this turbulent time, intellectuals no longer believed that Christianity could unite the German people or reflect a uniquely German culture, especially in the face of developing egotism, commercialism and social strife. As George S. Williamson suggests, in response to such circumstances Romantics attempted to unearth and adapt Germanic myths in order to promote what Friedrich Schlegel called ‘new mythology’, which could establish an authentic German culture and ‘transform a fragmented modern society into a unified whole’. Richard Wagner, under the influence of his Romantic predecessors, sought to create his own ‘new mythology’ in order to revive, or even redeem, his nation.