The failure of the Magdeburg Theatre once more threw Wagner on his own resources. He had borrowed money recklessly, hoping to pay it from the proceeds of the performance of his opera. Poor Wagner! All his life he was ahead of his income, and no amount of experience could teach him to manage his finances. He went to Berlin to offer the "Liebesverbot" to the opera, but without success, and then he heard that there was an opening as musical director at the Königsberg Theatre. To that city, therefore, he went in the hope of securing the post. His Magdeburg friends, Frau Pollert, the prima donna, and Wilhelmina Planer, the actress, had found employment there, and the young composer was drawn after the second of these women by ties soon to become closer. He wrote to his friend Dorn to ask his aid, but it seems that the good Heinrich was unable to do anything for him. Nevertheless the Königsberg post was given to him and he began his duties in January, 1837, after nine months of idleness. Before taking this position Wagner had done two things which must now be recorded. He had written his first prose essay, and he had married. The essay contained some unwise comments on the "Euryanthe" of Weber, whom Wagner as a boy had venerated. He subsequently experienced a second change of heart in regard to this composer. He had a change of heart, too, in regard to his wife, also partly on artistic grounds. Glasenapp says of this hasty and ill-fated union:
"The link was now forged that bound his future to a helpmate with whom he had the smallest possible community of inner feeling. Beyond doubt, he brought her that genuine affection which survived the hardest trials it ever was put to; beyond doubt, the pretty, young, and popular actress meant well by the ardent young conductor when she joined her hand with his at a time of so little outward prospect; beyond doubt she expected much from his abilities.... Any profounder sense of the enormous artistic significance of her husband never dawned upon her, either in this cloudy period or at a later date; and though she made him loving sacrifices, she neither had the blissful satisfaction of knowing to whom they were offered, nor of affording the struggling artist a sympathetic ear in which to pour his deeper woes. Wagner never forgot how she bore the trials of the next few changeful years without a murmur; nevertheless, this precipitate marriage of two natures so immiscible dragged after it an almost endless chain of sorrows and internal conflicts."
[CHAPTER III]
KÖNIGSBERG AND RIGA
“To extricate myself from the petty commerce of the German stage.”—Wagner
Minna Planer, as she was called, was the daughter of a spindle-maker, and according to Praeger,[8] who knew her well, went on the stage not because she was endowed with histrionic talent, but because it was necessary for her to contribute to the support of her father's family. Wagner had become engaged to her while at Magdeburg, and he married her on Nov. 24, 1836, at Königsberg. He was twenty-three years old and the wisdom of his marriage was what might have been expected of a boy. From all the testimony it appears that the first wife of Richard Wagner was a good, gentle, loving woman, devoted to him in a mild, unimpassioned manner, and utterly incapable of understanding him. At the outset of their married life, she was almost as improvident as he, and the burden of debt which he had accumulated at Magdeburg grew larger at Königsberg. Later at Riga these two poor children lived in a house in the outskirts of a town and had to take a cab whenever they went to the theatre!
In later years Minna learned the meaning of economy, and she struggled bravely to make both ends meet, when there was nothing but ends. But never did she perceive the genius of her husband, and for that reason she was always impatient with his dreams of great achievements, when money could have been earned by prosaic labour at the expense of hazy aspirations. A woman of tender eye and sweet speech, she commanded the sympathy of Wagner's friends, and it was indeed a fatal misfortune for this gentle dove that she was mismated with an eagle. Certainly she suffered much and bore with patience, not only the privations of domestic life in straitened circumstances, but also the waywardness and eccentricities of a mind beyond her comprehension. Praeger says:
"As years rolled by and the genius of Wagner assumed more definite shape and grew in strength, she was less able to comprehend the might of his intellect. To have written the 'Novice of Palermo' at twenty-three and to have been received so cordially was to her unambitious heart the zenith of success. More than that she could not understand, nor did she ever realise the extent of the wondrous gifts of her husband. After twenty years of wedded life it was much the same. We were sitting at lunch in the trimly kept Swiss châlet at Zurich in the summer of 1856, waiting for the composer of the then completed 'Rienzi,' 'Dutchman,' 'Tannhäuser' and 'Lohengrin' to come down from his scoring of the 'Nibelungen,' when in full innocence she asked me, 'Now, honestly, is Richard such a great genius?' On another occasion, when he was bitterly animadverting on his treatment by the public, she said, 'Well, Richard, why don't you write something for the gallery?'"