I dared to bury many a smart
Which long and deeply grieved my heart.
With these words Wagner greeted his king on the latter’s birth day in 1870, and with clear-sighted boldness he said to himself, “The morning of mankind is dawning.” The work, however, which was to glorify and render effective this first full Siegfried-deed of the Germans since the days of the Reformation, and revive the moral energy of the nation, was completed in June of the same year, 1870, with the “Goetterdaemmerung.”
He now strove to strengthen himself anew and permanently. For the first time in his life he fully secured the purely human happiness which preserves our powers. He married the divorced Frau Cosima von Buelow, a daughter of Liszt. “This man, so completely controlled by his demon, should always have had at his side a high-minded, appreciative woman, a wife that would have understood the war that was constantly waged within him,” is the judgment passed on Wagner’s first wife by one of her friends. He had now found this woman, and in a way that proved on every hand a blessing. Her incomparably unselfish, self-sacrificing first husband himself declared afterwards that this was the only proper solution. Siegfried was the name given to the fruit of this union. The “Siegfried Idyl” of 1871 is dedicated to the boy’s happy childhood in the beautiful surroundings of Lucerne.
In this year, the centennial anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, he also told his nation what it possessed in him, its most manly son. He represents, as he says in that Jubilee pamphlet, the spirit so much feared beyond the mountains as well as on the other side of the Rhine. He regained for us the innocence of the soul. What is now wanting is, that out of this pure spirit-nature, as it is illustrated in his music, there shall arise a true culture in contrast with the foreign civilization, which resembles the time of the Roman emperors? These tones utter anew a world-saving prophesy, and shall we not then appropriate them fully and forever? The “thought of Baireuth” now obtained more definite form. A number of friends of the cause were to make it real and wrest German art from the Venusberg of the common theatre.
The work of the Wagner-clubs now began, which, with the aid of the Baireuth Board of Managers, under the direction of the indefatigable banker Fustel, has led to the goal at last. Liszt’s Scholar, Tausig, and his friend, Frau von Schleinitz, in Berlin, organized the society of “Patrons,” each member of which was to contribute one hundred thalers toward a fund of three hundred thousand. By the publication of his writings, Wagner himself introduced the cause that was to show that in his art also he sought that life by which the ideal nature of the nation exists. His noble-minded king had, in November of 1870, uttered the words of deliverance to the other German princes, which finally gave us again a dignified and honorable existence as a nation, by creating the German empire. Could German art then remain in the background? Our artist was now all activity—a wonderfully joyous and stirring activity. To the “German army before Paris,” he who had always thought and labored for his nation’s glory, sang, in January, 1871, the song of triumphant joy of the German armies’ deeds:
The Emperor comes: let justice now in peace have sway.
At that time, also, he composed, at the suggestion of Dr. Abrahams, owner of the “Peters edition,” in Leipzig, the Kaiser March, which closes with the following people’s song:
God save the Emperor, William, the King!
Shield of all Germans, freedom’s defense!
The highest crown
Graces thine head with renown!
Peace, won with glory, be thy recompense!
As foliage new upon the oak-tree grows,
Through thee the German Empire new-born rose;
Hail to its ancient banners which we
Did carry, which guided thee
When conquering bravely the Gallic foes!
Defying enemies, protecting friends,
The welfare of the nations Germany defends.
Shortly afterward he expresses more clearly the meaning of the festival-plays that are to be representations in a nobler and original German style, and he, the lonely wanderer, who hitherto has heard but the croakings in the bogs of theatrical criticism, accompanied the pamphlet with an essay on the “Mission of the Opera,” with which he at the same time introduces himself as a member of the Berlin Academy.
In the spring of 1871, he went to Baireuth, the ancient residence of the Margraves, which contained one of the largest theatres. The building was arranged for the wants of the court and not fully adapted to his purposes, but the simple and true-hearted inhabitants of the place had attracted him. Besides this, the pleasant, quiet little city was situated in the “Kingdom of Grace” and, what likewise seemed of importance, in the geographical centre of Germany. A short stay subsequently in the capital of the new empire revealed his goal at once with stronger consciousness and purpose both for himself and his friends. At a celebration held there in his honor he said that the German mind bears the same relation to music as to religion. It demands the truth and not beautiful form alone. As the Reformation had laid the foundations of the religion of the Germans deeper and stronger by freeing Christianity from Roman bonds, so music must retain its German characteristics of profoundness and sublimity. During the same time the building of the theatre after Semper’s designs was planned with the building inspector, Neumann.