Who is Winnie, who is Wolf? Well the first one is Winniefried Wagner, Richard Wagner’s daughter-in-law, and Wolf is Adolf Hitler who visited the Wagner home frequently from the beginning of the ‘20’s to 1930. This is fiction, but great, with wonderful insights into Wagner family and their feeling of their own superiority. Hitler was an ardent devotee of Wagner’s music, and he acted like a pussycat whenever he visited and in the beginning he visited a lot. Tender to the kids they loved him; he read stories to them and was gentle. Winnie according to this had a relationship with Hitler, maybe bore him a child. Something I never heard, but ok this is fiction. There are fascinating stories about raising monies for the Wagner festivals after the only son of Wagner, Fidi, died and Winnie became a widow and was now running the Festival with a great sense of recognition and according to this Hitler’s regime also gave financial support to the continuation of the festival.
By 1933 rumors abounded that the two were having an affair. None of this has ever been proved. Hitler’s letters to Winnie remain the property of the Wagner family, and scholars have been denied access to them. But in a bold act of the imagination, the British novelist A. N. Wilson has decided not only that the relationship was sexual and that it produced a child.
Various high Nazi gargoyles are also on show, including Göring, Goebbels, Streicher, the niece who committed suicide, Hitler’s flatulence, the composer’s widow Cosima. Oh it’s so gossipy but it follows the known lines of history. Here we have anti-semites in love. Imagine that. I liked this book immensely, could not put it down, and immediately listened to a Wagner CD once I finished.
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