A descendant of Richard Wagner, Hitler’s favorite composer, promised to hand over the correspondence of her late father to the Bavarian State Archives.
Katharina Wagner, a great-granddaughter of the composer and director of the annual Bayreuth Festival of his works, told Der Tagesspiegel newspaper in Berlin that she plans to give Wolfgang Wagner’s letters to the archive in the near future in an effort to provide greater transparency about her family’s past.
Of particular interest to historians is the connection of the Wagner family to high-ranking Nazis.
Wolfgang Wagner, who died in 2010, headed the Bayreuth opera festival from 1951 to 2008 with his brother, Wieland. Their mother, Winifred, was known to be a friend and admirer of Hitler who encouraged her children in the same direction.
In her interview with Der Tagesspiegel, Wagner noted that Richard Wagner’s “vile anti-Semitism and the way the festival has dealt with the Nazi past are still controversial issues” that demand attention. — jta