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We show two exhibitions,

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that relate to each other.

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One about Wagner and the other one about Marx.

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Both thinkers, authors, activists,

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as one would call them today,

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personalities of the 19th century,

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who reacted very strongly to

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what we call modernity today – 

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Marx, we would say, coming from the left rather,

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and Wagner increasingly from the right.

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It was important to me, for the two exhibitions

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to be conceived in such a way,

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that we really travel back from the present,

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from the 21st century and from the 20th century,

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to their time, into the 19th century,

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in order to see the two,

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that seem so far apart today,

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in one picture, so to say.

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When you talk to people who are specialists,

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either for Marx or for Wagner,

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it is striking to see, that these two thinkers

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are worlds apart, for them.

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And this distinction between them, is essentially

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also a result of the later reception of the works,

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in the 20th and in the 21st century.

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And I think,

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if we as the Deutsches Historisches Museum,

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manage to historicize the two

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as historical personalities in their time,

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then I hope, that perhaps one perceives this abyss differently.

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Then you can see that there are individual themes,

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that have occupied both of them very strongly,

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or which they have commented on:

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With Wagner, of course, very prominently so his anti-Semitism,

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with Marx, by the way, in a certain phase of his work, too.

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But on the other hand, with both, this confrontation

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with what they, in very different ways,

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called alienation – Marx very theoretically,

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as a term, which played a major role

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in his work as a philosopher,

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and in Wagner's case perhaps more strongly aiming

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at feelings, as something he saw

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concerning people as a problem within modernity.

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To Michael Steinberg, who curated our Wagner exhibition,

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it was very important, to make feelings

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the centre of our exhibition.

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One can perhaps summarize them by saying,

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that they are sort of looking at something like a national,

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a "German national feeling",

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which is linked to the German national feeling.