Dear Fellow Patriot!


I couldn't have found a better time to write about
Ludwig II of Bavaria. With Adelaide in Australia
hosting Wagner's Ring, I think you will enjoy it.

In American history, the Bavarian King is another one
of the great leaders who has turned into controversy.

Ludwig Friedrich Wilhelm was born on Monday, August
25th, 1845. His father, Max Josef, had died and
grandpa, King Ludwig I, was delighted that his
grandson was born on his birthday.

The baptism of Prince Ludwig was an elaborate
ceremony. The godfather and godmother were King
Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, Empress Elizabeth of
Austria and King Otto of Greece.

It should be interesting to history buffs, that Prince
Ludwig initially was called "Otto" for the first few
days, then grandpa King Ludwig I renamed the boy to
Ludwig.

So it came that another controversial figure was born.
"The Mad King" he was named by U.S. historians. The
Bavarians affectionately called him "the dream King"
or the "Swan King." One can find a few similarities
between King Ludwig II and Reichs Chancellor Adolf
Hitler. Both quite artistic and both loved the arts.
Without Ludwig II, the Fuehrer would have not been
able to become Richard Wagner's admirer.

I am a great admirer of the Dream King. Only in
America has it caused me some pain, as I display
pictures of King Ludwig II in my house. I think this
was the initial reason on how the rumors started about
my private life.

I am still trying to find sensible information as to
why American historians would call King Ludwig II "Mad
King." Maybe because art, music and architecture are
alien to Americans?

There are many rumors about the Dream Kings private
life, and all of them are lies.

As Prince, Ludwig wrote his first play when he was 6.
His talent and skills were so enormous that he built a
perfect replica of the arch of Constantine in Rome.

Prince Ludwig developed his admiration for composer
Richard Wagner at an early age. He was 13 when he
heard about the production of Wagner's "Lohengrin" in
Munich. He requested a copy of Wagner's opera.

King Ludwig I died and so a very young Prince became
the King of Bavaria. Ludwig II was tall, athletic and
physically very powerful. A good rider and a strong
swimmer.

The famous Austrian writer, Klara Tschudi, wrote about
the young king:

"...the best-looking boy I have ever seen."

The young king, despite what you might hear, was
dutiful to his state affairs, even though he was never
fond of it. His passion was the arts. In particular
Richard Wagner.

Wagner, broke and pursued by his creditors, was at the
end of a promising career. However, the power of being
king enabled Ludwig II to come to Wagner's rescue.
Finally, Wagner had found his prince. In an emotional
letter, Wagner wrote:

"Blessed graceful King. I send you these tears of most
heavenly emotions to tell you that now the heavens of
poetry have come as a divine reality into my poor
loveless life."

I can just see how Americans would read into this
quote. Wagner in reality was a ladies man. Many
affairs jeopardized his marriage.

When one interprets any gesture or writings from these
times, one must largely disregard the affectionate
tone, so often misinterpreted by historians. The
underlying love that the king showed for many of his
protégés must be viewed under context of the period,
the race, the language and the special circumstances.

The Dream King was not just a sponsor of Richard
Wagner, but also a sponsor of many actors and
actresses. Franz Liszt was amongst the king's
protégés.

Richard Wagner became a big part of the king's life.
In the castle Neuschwanstein, a small opera house was
built, and many of Wagner's operas premiered there
first.

Speaking of castles, this was another one of his
passions. Architecture in the most elaborate way. The
king always made clear that he wasn't building these
castles for the people, but for himself, even though
today, King Ludwig II castles are a large revenue for
the State of Bavaria.

With the help of Christian Jank, architect and friend,
Ludwig built four castles as the world had never seen
before: Neuschwanstein, Herrenchiemsee, Linderhof and
Hohenschwangau.

King Ludwig II of Bavaria fell in love with Lila von
Bulgawski. It is still believed that the Hungarian
actress was the dream king's true love. Of course, the
traditional royal court rejected his choice.
Nevertheless, the young king engaged in a
compassionate romance with the young actress. Only
when the Queen Mother interfered and ordered the
actress to leave Munich, the love affair ended.

The second woman in the kinds live was Sofia von
Bayern, the sister of the Empress Sissy, Sofie was
also a Wagner enthusiast. The King sneaked off many
times to meet Princess Sofia in Possenhofen, the
residence of Erzherzog Max of Bavaria, Sofia's father.


Both enjoyed almost every premiere of Wagner's opera
and then finally, the King asked his mother to marry
Sofie. The engagement was announced, however, the
obsession with Wagner soon became a problem.

Suddenly, King Ludwig II put all his emotions into the
work of Richard Wagner. "The Ring" became the King's
new work for the next two years.

In spring of 1871, Wagner was planning to stage "The
Ring" at Bayreuth, calling it the "Bayreuth Festival"
(still alive today). Broke again, Wagner asked the
King for help. Finally, in August of 1876, the premier
of The Ring opened the Bayreuth Festival. The dream
king was an honored guest. The Ring was the highlight
of Wagner's career. On February 13th, 1883, Wagner
died. The coffin was brought to Bayreuth, however, the
King was not there. In a statement, King Ludwig II of
Bavaria said:

"It was I who was the first to recognize the artist
whom the whole world mourns - and it was I who saved
him for the world."

The King went into a deep depression and it affected
severely the political affairs around the royal court.
Soon, a conspiracy was set, which wanted the King to
be exiled in one of his castles and a royal committee
to continue the state affairs.

Charges were brought against the King of physical
abuse, mental incompetence and violence. The King
signed the papers that he would not get involved in
any state affairs. At the beginning, he was exiled to
Neuschwanstein, yet, there was still hope King Ludwig
II was very much loved by the Bavarian people, and a
rebellion was brewing. The Kings friends were ready
and eager to rescue him.

In an emotional plea, the King asked the people to
stand down. He did not wanted bloodshed from his own
people. After that, the King was exiled to Schloss
Berg at the Starnberg Lake. It was more or less an
incarceration.

History tells us today that the King threw himself
into Starnberg Lake. I say he was killed.

King Ludwig II of Bavaria was one of the greatest
builders, he demanded before else, historical truth,
based on his own scientific studies. And early
revisionist. King Ludwig II turned Munich into the
capitol of European Art. For him, the costs were more
than just an illusionary world. It was his way of
protesting against the power structure and a world
that showed no understanding for him.

*******************************************************

And just perfect, from the Adelaide Institute:

http://www.adelaideinstitute.org


 
ANDREW GRAY - ERRORS, LIES AND NONSENSE ABOUT WAGNER

[Delivered at Adelaide Institute's International
Revisionist Symposium, 9 August 1998. Andrew Gray's
translation of Richard Wagner's autobiography Mein
Leben, is still in print.]

Nobody blames Lenin on Tolstoi - and they were
contemporaries. I think Lenin was 40 years old when
Tolstoy died in 1910, and Tolstoy's later ruminations
on collectivism in the latter stages of his life were
useful to Lenin, who adored him when putting together
those doctrines, or whatever one wants to call them,
which resulted in Stalin's Leninism. But an entire
world industry blames Hitler on Richard Wagner, and
Wagner died six years before Hitler was born.

It's very difficult to characterise the fatuity of
such a debate, discussion, 'Geplapper', or whatever.
The Germans have also the term 'Geschwafel'. The
German language has wonderful words for this kind of
thing, but whatever it is, it is world-wide. It goes
on and on and on, and as we speak here another
symposium is taking place. And it's taking place in
Bayreuth under the Schirmherrschaft des
Bundespräsidenten, Dr Roman Herzog, and it's called
"Wagner und die Juden". It's taking place over a
series of five days, from the 6th to the 11th. We
Revisionists are much more modest.

I'll just read you this from the fourth day of this
interminable stream of guff, I'll read you some of the
titles of the lectures. Professors have turned up from
all over the world but the two main ones are from Tel
Aviv University and the University of Heidelberg. And
here are some of the titles that they are discussing
right now:

Professor David S Katz is discussing "Wagner, the Jews
and the Occult Tradition". I mean, you may just as
well be discussing his dogs, for that matter.
Professor Rudolf Behrenbach is discussing
"Anti-Semitismus als aesthetisches Program" -
anti-Semitism as aesthetic doctrine. Professor David
Lange is lecturing on "A mirror of the Master. The
Racial Theories of Houston Stewart Chamberlain".
Professor Paul L. Rose is lecturing-this is on the
final day now-"Wagner and Hitler after the Holocaust".
Dr Dina Porac of Tel Aviv University is lecturing on
"The Impact of Wagner's Concepts on the Nazi
Movement". This is on the fifth day. By this time they
must be glassy eyed. Even a friend of mine is
lecturing. They've given him the time of 8.45 in the
evening. He's lecturing on "Thomas Mann, Wagner and
the Jews". If anybody at 8.45 pm is either sober or
awake, it will absolutely be amazing. And the last
one, the final word, will be by Dr Lana Sheshik, who
is going to lecture on "Wagner-Israel, from the ban to
the creation of a symbol, 1938 to 1997".

Well, there seems to be almost no end to it, but the
one subject they fail to touch upon is Wagner himself.
They deny it. I mean, that is what's completely lost
in this unthinking and this monumental detour around
the subject which they make.

There was in circulation in the 1920s an old League of
Nations anecdote. It's partly apocryphal but it's
apropos. Elephants were an endangered species in the
1920s. There was a League of Nations commission
founded to look into it. It was a multi-national
committee, and it had each member looking at some
specific aspect of the elephant problem. The Frenchman
supposedly took the elephant and the reproductive
cycle. The Englishman took the ivory trade and its
implications. But the longest of all disquisitions was
by a Pole who reported on 'The Elephant and the Polish
Question'.

You can always take a subject and get it by the tail.
One can always indulge in some kind of subject
completely self-referentially, and of course that is
what has happened here. It is true that you can say
Wagner was concerned in his life about virtually every
conceivable problematic aspect of the civilization.
Any kind of problem - vivisection was such a general
problem. He didn't like cruelty to animals. Any single
aspect of civilisation was a problem and captured his
attention.

He certainly didn't like newspapers and he saw
horrible dangers in journalism. I mean his genius was
anticipatory in so many respects but I think he saw
the age of the mass media coming, and he found the
German newspapers of his time completely and totally
irresponsible with respect to his own art, which they
in fact were. But one of the things that Wagner
research does now is to go back and look at the
evidence. That at least is something - go back and see
what actually was written.

From the time he got back to Germany from Paris in
1842, and from the minute he set foot in Dresden and
began to announce himself, with what Bülow later
called Meyerbeer's best opera - Rienzi - from this new
beginning, he encountered a kind of massive
distortion, hostility and really gratuitous insults in
the public press.

It was bound to upset him sooner or later. I mean,
this sort of thing is bound to upset anybody and it
seemed to be from his standpoint the one thing the
critics would not do was address themselves to the
works of art themselves.

Then, you know, came Tannhäuser. 'Oh, it's Catholic
propaganda', unbelievable nonsense from day one. He
looked at the mass media, at these papers, and he saw
great danger in this. And by the 1850s it occurred to
him that there was a Jewish presence among the music
journalism of the time - and there is no question that
there was.

In going into Wagner's biography it is of course
terribly dangerous to say anything in public
categorically because the likelihood of error is
enormous. In his life we have it year by year for the
first 25 years, but then we have it month by month. By
the time he gets to Dresden, we've got it week by week
and by the time he gets to Zürich in his years of
Swiss exile, we've got it pretty much day by day.
That's the kind of scholarship that's gone into this
and by the time Cosima starts keeping her diary it is
hour by hour.

So the manner in which people write casually on the
subject never ceases to amaze me because of the
primary documents are all there. 5,000 letters, and
there is now under way a publication of every letter
he ever wrote. They're now at Volume 9 which takes you
to the year 1857. There will be 30 volumes that will
not be completed during my life-time. That's the kind
of dimension of scholarship that goes on - and all
this editing, every last letter is still annotated. So
if you talk about Wagner casually there is trouble,
you'll be in the soup very quickly.

Nevertheless, I will make a guess concerning the first
real stage of his resentment which then took form in
this polemic for which he was never forgiven - Das
Judentum in der Musik. It came from his inability to
get Tannhäuser performed in Berlin.

Tannhäuser had its premiere in September in Dresden in
1845. I'm sure most people know this work. It's one of
the great gifts to German opera. It's to the Germans
what La Traviata is to the Italians. I mean, he gave
them the most German of his works. You could not give
a greater gift than what he gave, and what he did for
mediaeval Germany. If you go to the Wartburg today,
you can see the second act of Tannhäuser, right there
physically to look at. And it's difficult to
understand why he could not get this opera accepted,
really.

Why was Berlin so important? The reason was that it
was the only German theatre that paid royalties. The
German system prior to 1870 was tilted against
independent artists and composers because what the
court theatres would do would give you a lump sum
payment for all rights permanently. The lump sum
payment that Wagner would get for say Tannhäuser from
the Royal Court Theatre in Hannover was 2,000 florins,
let's say. It would be equivalent to $4,000 but
nothing on which you could base an existence. Nothing
on which you could buy or build a house of any kind.
You know, Wagner did not have a roof to call his own
over his head until he was nearly 60 years old. These
are just facts, and if after creating works that have
been the centre of the lyric stage ever since, and he
managed to become a little bitter about money - think
of the system. Verdi was a wealthy man by the time he
was 50. The rules were different. He was blocked. He
did blame Meyerbeer, the Berlin court theatre.
Meyerbeer controlled the northern European stage. The
Paris Opera was in Meyerbeer's hands. These operas
were the central money makers , the central core of
the repertoire of the time. They have more or less
vanished from the theatre of today. It's hard for us
to remember how dominant they were. And Meyerbeer -
Wagner concluded it was Meyerbeer who was blocking the
path intentionally. Well, the evidence for this is
very mixed because Meyerbeer was terribly careful
where Wagner was concerned and there is no smoking-gun
tape in which Meyerbeer said, "I don't want that
bastard's operas performed here". Nothing of that
kind, nothing.

Nonetheless, he ran up against a stone wall in the
Berliner Intendantz , year after year in 1846, 1847. I
mean, he did manage to get Rienzi performed there - by
that time he regarded it a 'Jugendsünde' - a sin of my
youth. It was one of the reasons for his own money
troubles and his own desperation which led him to
participate in the Dresden uprising of 1849.

In the autobiography he was wonderfully candid, almost
across the board. It's a very accurate work. It's
often termed as 'here's Wagner spinning tales', this
and that. No, no. It is an extremely accurate work,
except for two matters in which he is less than
candid. One is the extent of his participation in the
Dresden uprising. I mean, he makes it appear in his
autobiography as if he were a bystander and a cheer
leader, sort of saying 'Go to it, I hope you win', and
that sort of thing. But, oh no, no, he was the number
3 man. He was right behind Heubner and Bakunin. Three
men led that: Heubner, Bakunin and Richard Wagner. The
argument is about the charges against him - if caught
he would have been sent to death. He certainly would
have been sent to prison and he escaped while Heubner
and Bakunin were sent to jail for many years.

There is a biographical question: Did he personally
participate in the loading of handgrenades? It's an
open question whether he was actually there, filling
these projectiles with powder. That's the kind of
thing that's disputed. It's very possible he was. I
mean, he was not a half-way person. Once he did
something, he did it all the way, which is, of course,
what got him into trouble with the pamphlet that he
tossed off in a couple of days of anger in 1850 having
landed in Zürich, penniless and in exile, and looking
back at the German musical establishment from which he
was then banned. He did write the brochure Das
Judentum in der Musik. It's often translated as
Judaism in Music. That's incorrect. 'Das Judentum' is
not 'Judaism' - we don't have an English equivalent
for 'Das Judentum'.

If you read it, it isn't that bad. What he is not
forgiven for is saying by implication that neither
Meyerbeer nor Mendelssohn - Mendelssohn, whom he names
- would love to write German opera but they can't. Why
can't they? Well, because as Jews they don't have the
right relationship to the two great roots of music -
the liturgical music (the church music), and the
folksong. The dual root to a nation's music was
folksong and liturgical music. I think he's completely
right on that. And he asserted wrongly, as we found,
Jews would not be able to compose authentic German
music. Occasionally he was wrong. He was wrong on
that.

He went on to say, for which he was not forgiven,
because it was gratuitous that Jewish liturgical music
is without any musical value at all, and added that
whatever you hear in a synagogue is a form of
gargling. He did write that and again when he got
started he was not the kind of man that pulled his
punches. The difficulty was, when he came to publish a
new edition of his collected prose works in 1869, he
insisted, against the advice of Liszt, against the
advice of several friends, many of whom were Jewish -
Heinrich Porges was Jewish, Karl Tausig was Jewish.
Two of his pallbearers were Jewish, for heavens sake!
He was not the kind of man who was going to withdraw
it. Instead he plunked it into his Gesammelte
Schriften - and he has not been forgiven for that
either. It was a conscious decision. He even equipped
it with another preface, a rather self-serving preface
and an accompanying letter to Marie Muchanoff. That
was typical of him. He was not the kind of man who
would back down.

If one were to grab the whole subject by the tail,
when you interpret works of art of this kind by
stating that they reflect the personal prejudices of
the creator, I often felt how grateful we should be
there was nobody to take down words from Shakespeare's
last years. We know so little of what Shakespeare said
and did, what the man, if indeed he is the man who did
write the plays - what kind of casual comments he
might have made. I'm sure he excoriated the French.

In his later years, it has to be remembered, Wagner
was in very fragile health. He had a very, very severe
heart condition and his survival was really Cosima's
doing, his wife's doing, who watched him like a hawk.
I mean, just to make certain that he wouldn't be
upset, he was very irascible anyway. The slightest
thing was likely to upset him. She was always there to
calm him down. That's why we have Parsifal. That's why
we have the Bayreuth Theatre, because she was there in
those later years when he was frequently close to
death. It would be in the diary: "Richard has a narrow
escape today". It was that kind of thing, on many
occasions he would be close to death. So some of his
writings in his later years and some of the statements
that are quoted, are the product of temporary
outbursts of irascibility. Which one of us has not at
some time said things of this sort about anybody which
are either irresponsible or boundlessly exasperated
with different things? But these things were then
excerpted and taken down and written, 'Wagner says
this. This is what Wagner says. Wagner said this about
so-and-so'. Not just Jews, on anything. It is entirely
ludicrous to excerpt from a gigantic body of documents
one line. I'll give you an example of the kind of
thing that is excerpted. There was a fire in the
Theater an der Wien, a very bad theatre fire, I think
about 100 people were burnt to death in the fire - and
they were performing Orpheus in die Unterwelt. When
this was reported to Wagner, he burst out, "Serves
them right for going to hear Offenbach".

You know, he didn't mean that, but this is the kind of
thing that went hotly over the wires: "Wagner says
they got what they deserve". This kind of thing has
been going on for more than a hundred years and I
don't know how long it is going to go on. But I think
it's got to be said , the Jewish issue is just part of
it. It's only a small part of it. I tell you what I
think is at stake. Resentment and envy basically is at
fault here because the gods did this only once.
They'll never again combine that kind of supreme
talent of the composer and the supreme talent as a
dramatist under one brow, apart from a few other
things that he could do. For instance, he was a first
class architect. His supreme gift as a dramatist has
baffled academia ever since. I'll bet you at the
University of Adelaide they'll have a course of the
history of western drama but they won't have Wagner as
a dramatist. They don't know where to put him. But he
is the legatee of Aeschylus. He, as the dramatist, is
the legatee. He is impossible to categorize. The size
of his genius - Liszt had a wonderful term: "Richard
Wagner ist ein Schädelspaltendes Genie" - "a
skull-splitting genius" was what Liszt called him. He
was certainly 'Das Jahrhundertgenie'. He certainly was
that. We fellow Wagnerians feel he was 'das
Jahrtausendgenie'.

The envy, I think, at the tap root of this general
uproar - this endless, endless backbiting, this
gratuitous malevolence, envy and discomfort is really
at the base of it. Resentment, too. He said once to
his wife - this comes from the diaries - every two
pages there are little asides, she is very good at
jotting down his casual remarks. She's a smart woman.
She knows when he's said something memorable. On one
occasion he said, "I robbed music of its innocence".
What did he mean? What he means is what he's never
been forgiven for, of course. He sees that human
sexuality pervades music, all the way up to the most
sublime realm. In this case he certainly anticipated
all of psychiatry, all of Freud, effortlessly.

And second, the works themselves. He's the grand
master of the sublime, but into the music is composed,
decisively and inextricably a sense that the entire
bid for transcendence may be in vain. You see, that's
where Der Ring is. I hope you're going to get a good
production of it. In an authentic production of the
Ring, the fundamental question will be posed right
away, and the fundamental question is: is there any
transcendental meaning at all, or are we entirely
subject to natural law?

What do you see? At the opening of Das Rheingold, you
see the natural world in its most innocent stage, the
three Rhinemaidens representing the natural world.
Subaquarus, they represent the unconscious itself.
That's the world before it was penetrated by human
reflection and conscious intelligence. There they are,
swimming around and notice the first line of Der Ring.
This is by a man who is always accused of being much
too verbose and going on and on forever, taking up
time on things. The whole work begins:

Weia! Waga!

Woge, du Welle!

Walle zur Wiege!

Wagalaweia!

Those are playful sounds the two nouns have crept in -
'Welle' and 'Wiege'. What has happened to the world?
Yes, language has entered it. What does it mean?
Reflective consciousness has entered it. And guess
what? The symbol of reflective consciousness turns up.
What is the symbol? Well, it's an ugly dwarf. It's not
a very attractive character in its early days. Why is
it ugly and why not very attractive? The process by
which reflective intelligence came into the world, so
far as we know, was not a very clean one. All of this
is understood by Wagner long before Darwin published
The Origin of the Species. Rheingold was written in
1852.

Now, pay attention to the text, which unfortunately
very few stage directors these days do. Take a look at
what is said between Alberich and the Rhinemaidens who
tease him, of course.

The first thing the Rhinemaidens see is he's clumsy.
You see the stage directions - he has problems
climbing on the rocks. He's not very agile. He doesn't
move very well. What he says to the Rhinemaidens is
that it's easy for you - they do it by pure instinct.
He's got to learn everything. That's what
consciousness does. It compels you to learn to do
things that other creatures do instinctively.

But he's turned down by the first of the Rhinemaidens,
who represent the natural world and are indifferent to
him, just as they are indifferent to Siegfried. The
natural world doesn't care about us as individuals.
Listen to the music in Götterdämmerung, Act III. That
is one of the reasons why it has such enormous
emotional force. The stream of time, the river, is
entirely indifferent to the hero. Heroes come and go.
The river and time remain - it's in the music. Only
Wagner could do that!

What else does Alberich say? The first Rhinemaiden
turns him down, and Alberich says "I'm glad there's
more than one of you because if there was only one of
you I wouldn't have much of a chance". What's the
meaning of that line? He's accepted the law of
probability as governing the world, the natural world,
which it does. Probability governs our lives.

It is only when all three Rhinemaidens reject him that
it occurs to him, well, the Rhein may move on but its
not necessarily going to help him individually - one
of nature's horrible truths. And it's only then that
the ray of sunlight pierces the flowing water, a
musically sensational moment among so many - and
illuminates the gold at the base - a large block of
raw gold.

And please, directors, please, do what Wagner says.
Let the ray of sunlight illuminate the raw gold.
Please don't turn it into a municipal water works or
something else. Please don't try to have some
artificial symbolism of 19th century capitalism.
Please do what Wagner asked.

I assume what you're going to get is a very spare,
lean production here in Adelaide. But maybe you'll be
lucky enough. Maybe they'll pay attention to his stage
directions.

And Alberich stops transfixed, as does everybody,
transfixed by the music. And what does that stand for?
Guess what? Reflective intelligence itself is
represented by this ray of light on the gold.

The gold is a symbol of many other things besides, and
I'm not saying that the anti-capitalist interpretation
of Der Ring is wrong. You can take Der Ring as class
warfare, but that's not a central part. Reflective
consciousness has penetrated - there it is, and what
is to be done with it? Well, it occurs to Alberich, 'I
can do something with reflective consciousness.
Instead of chasing these women who won't pay attention
to me, maybe something can be done with the brain
itself'. And he steals the gold, and takes the gold
and brings it up above the surface. Above the surface,
that is a symbol of bringing it into consciousness. He
takes it up to his factory in the mountain and forges
a ring. It's been said that if a symbol is easily
defined verbally, it's not a hell of a good symbol.
The 'ring' has so many aspects as a symbol, we'd be
here all day. But it certainly does stand for the
essence of reflective consciousness.

It's Alberich who puts it to work. It's Alberich's
ring. It's Alberich who finds out what you can do with
reflective consciousness. What you can do is all kinds
of things. You can put your brother to work forging
the Tarnhelm, for example. Don't forget that Rheingold
was written three years after wire telegraphy had been
invented. The electronic age had begun and again
Wagner catches this - he knows this. The electronic
age is implicit and the Tarnhelm stands for that,
doesn't it? Wagner gets the point - it stands for
instant transferability - 'Er entführt flugs dich
dahin'. He catches all that. The difference is that
Mime who can make it, doesn't own it. He can't control
it. It is the one who made the ring who controls it.

Well, that's the first scene of Rheingold. We are off
to the races for the rest of Der Ring. It just beggars
belief that I have to read from people whom I know
personally in New York or London, to say nothing of
some others that Alberich is a specific Jewish
caricature. If you want to believe that you can say
"Very like a whale". If that's the way you want to
interpret this scene, there's not much point in
arguing, is there?

I said that I'd talk about errors, lies and nonsense.
Since the errors, lies and nonsense are oceanic, we
would certainly be here far too long even to get under
the surface, much less to any great depth. I suppose
this nonsense will be with us permanently because
Wagner raises all the hard questions. No other
composer raises as insistently as he does the basic
fundamental philosophical questions?

For example, Parsifal, a work that I adore, I do not
take as an assertion of the Christian faith at all. I
take it as a farewell to transcendence, and the bid
for transcendence. I believe that if you look closely
and listen, you can see that Wagner leaves the
ultimates open. He's much too modest and sensible to
say categorically this is the way existence is and
this is the way philosophical truth is. It's all open.
Finally, everything is speculative, that's the way art
is. You can't possibly know what Shakespeare really
thought about anything.

You can take Parsifal as a farewell to transcendence,
and that we have to consecrate, we have to bless the
existence we've got because it's the only one. But you
can use it as an affirmation of a divine realm, a
realm of being other than the one we have. I don't
think the case for this is terribly good, and I think
if you listen to the music you will hear he has
managed to smuggle into the music the agonizing doubt.
What do you think the wound of Amfortes represents?

And the music represents the fatal doubt. It is a
question. The question is posed, but I don't think it
has any doctrinal interest. Wagner asked all these
impossible questions - what is music? What is the
relationship of music to society? What is the
relationship of music to the other arts? What is the
relationship between words and music? - just a simple
aesthetic question like that. He posed them, he poses
them all. Since his works pose them all, I assume that
the controversy is going to go on and on, and I
suppose it should. One would hope that sooner or later
we'll get away from 'the elephant and the Polish
question'.

*

Richard Hornung: You very enthusiastically affirm
Wagner, do you think that Nietzsche is a bit of an
aberration when he clearly had a split with Wagner?

AG: Nietzsche certainly adored the man and his own
life was one of the great tragedies of the time.
Nietzsche had a failed love affair with music which
was not successful and he never quite gave up as a
composer. The products show, as Wagner said, a modest
gift, but nothing that he could place much money upon,
and certainly Wagner said, stick to your knitting.
Nietzsche was a very self-obsessed person who
certainly used Wagner as a foil to define himself.
What really happened between them and what Nietzsche
said happened is just a day and night difference. The
answer is the meeting with Wagner was absolutely
crucial for Nietzsche, absolutely fundamentally
crucial.

Arthur Butz: I think it was about 10 years ago,
English philosopher, Brian McGee, published a little
book in which he claims that Wagner was right in his
booklet Das Judentum in der Musik

AG: Who would it be? I should know, many people have
suggested he's not entirely off base in stating what
Meyerbeer represented - Meyerbeer is the Andrew Lloyd
Webber of his time. Wagner was vindicated in the
artistic ideals he opposed to Meyerbeer's. He won
across the board. Again, part of the resentment is
that those who criticised him took such a beating.
Those who fought on the barricades against him took a
horrible beating, and still do. I'm sure there's been
a public protest that Das Judentum in der Musik is not
the kind of brochure other people say. It has nothing
to do with a political program of any kind. It has
nothing whatever to do with National Socialism,
nothing, nothing.

*******************************************************

From France's leading Revisionist, Prof. Robert
Faurisson:


Hitler's and Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction

Is it not wonderful to get the same lie from the same
people and for the same purpose?

In January 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt
decided to create, at the request of the Jew Henry
Morgenthau and his fellows, the so-called War Refugee
Board (WRB). In November 1944, that official body
published, under the heading "Executive Office of the
President / War Refugee Board / Washington, DC", a
report entitled German Extermination Camps - Auschwitz
and Birkenau, falsely accusing Adolf Hitler of having
weapons of mass destruction or WMD (called execution
gas chambers).

In 2002, President George W. Bush decided to create,
at the request of the Jew Paul Wolfowitz and his
fellows, the so-called Office of Special Plans (OSP).
[Headed by Abraham Shulsky,] that official body
authored reports falsely accusing Saddam Hussein of
having WMD.

The lie was the same: an accusation based on false
evidence. The people were the same: powerful American
Jews. The purpose was the same: war.

But there were also differences. First, the lie
against Hitler was about impossible and inconceivable
WMD (for physical and chemical reasons) while the lie
against Saddam Hussein was about quite possible and
conceivable WMD since his accusers themselves had the
same kind of weapons. Secondly, the lie against Adolf
Hitler was more than half a century old and stronger
than ever while the lie against Saddam Hussein was a
few months old and already not too strong. Thirdly, if
someone disputed the accusation against Adolf Hitler,
he might go to prison like Ernst Zündel while, if
someone disputed the accusation against Saddam
Hussein, he might, at least currently, be taking
limited risks. 

Observe how the lie was built against Saddam Hussein
and you will see exactly how the lie against Adolf
Hitler was forged by the same kind of people and for
the same purpose: perpetual war.

Nota bene : Upon becoming acquainted with the article
above (French version) one French reader concluded :
"Adolf Hussein had mass-execution gas chambers"
(September 25, 2004).


*******************************************************

Also from the Adelaide Institute:


DOES CRIME PAY?  ASK MARK WEBER!

       On page 22 of the double issue of American Free
Press, 645 Pennsylvania Ave., S.E., Washington, D, C.
20003, datelined Sept 20 & 27, 2004, the following
appears in an article by Richard V. London:
 
       Michael Collins Piper's discussion at the
conference is of special interest to readers of AFP
many who were formerly readers of the now-defunct
SPOTLIGHT. As requested by his host, Piper outlined
the career of Willis A. Carto, who is now a consultant
working with AFP.

      Not only the founder of Liberty Lobby, the
populist institution that published THE SPOTLIGHT,
Carto was also founder of the Institute for Historical
Review which, until Oct. 1, 1993, was the world's
foremost historical revisionist institute, reaching
some 7,000 subscribers and about 20,000 readers
bimonthly through its scholarly Journal of Historical
Review.

      Although the IHR ceased publishing after it was
destroyed from within, a new revisionist magazine,
founded by Carto, THE BARNES REVIEW now reaches more
than 7,000 subscribers in the United States and
worldwide.

        Piper's audience was surprised to learn that
during the last several months thanks to two judges
friendly to Weber, the IHR has been the beneficiary of
two substantial  estates, totaling some $1.7 million
in  funds earmarked for Liberty Lobby by two  longtime
patriots who would be aghast if they knew what had
happened to their estates  in the hands of purposeful
judges.

       This came as news to many who had received
letters from the IHR's new leader, Mark Weber, saying
the IHR is destitute.

        Weber's take as outlined above is only part of
his swag.  In addition to all of the assets of the
IHR, including the bank account of some $80,000, book
inventory of about $1.3 million at sale value.
$900,000 from the Farrel estate, the settlement with
Liberty Lobby of $1.2 million, the money stolen from
mail addressed to Liberty Lobby amounting to $50,000
and the house owned by the Cartos which was sold for
$275,000, Mr. Weber is a rich man. He got at least
$3.5 million from his "disloyal coup d'etat," to quote
William Hulsy, his attorney.

        Yes, crime does pay if you're a poodle of
Andrew E. Allen and have the CIA and the courts behind
you.

*******************************************************

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"The truth is back in business"

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