Twilight of the Wagners

Richard Wagner's great-grandson Gottfried Wagner, born after the end of World War II, was taught to worship his great-grandfather as a cultural ancestor of all of Germany. Perhaps no one took Richard Wagner's polemics more to heart than Adolf Hitler, for whom the musician was a foundational influence. In Gottfried Wagner's memoir, Twilight of the Wagners: The Unveiling of a Family's Legacy, Hitler is an inescapable presence, as he was in Gottfried's family - one of the many specters haunting the Wagner estate, though young Gottfried wondered if he was the only one who could see them. One afternoon he discovered old photographs and oil paintings of Hitler among the family memorabilia. Warned never to mention the pictures to anyone, he became an unwilling coconspirator in his family's secret. Gottfried Wagner reclaimed his voice during adolescence and began an impassioned crusade in adulthood to examine the hatred and racism he knew growing up in Bayreuth. Although disinherited and ostracized by his father, Gottfried has become an outspoken critic of Richard Wagner's legacy and a champion of greater understanding between Germans and Holocaust survivors worldwide. With a judicious eye for detail, a sweeping sense of conscience, and the determination to redeem himself and his past, Gottfried Wagner lays bare the sins of this powerful family.