An exhibition about Richard Wagner at
Deutsches Historisches Museum
is a very interesting challenge.
Richard Wagner is without a doubt a great figure
of modernism, a great figure of the 19th century.
What we want to show, is Wagner as the inventor of modernity,
Wagner as inventor of the so-called myth of modernity.
The myth of modernity being,
to invent and configure a complex of emotions.
How does one feel in the 19th century?
How does one learn to feel, to feel anew, and also to feel German?
That’s the second level of the question.
We work with the title "Richard Wagner and the Nationalization of Feeling“,
and we think of the feeling on two levels.
Firstly, Wagner taught his audience to feel through music,
and secondly, to feel German.
So, as he got older, Wagner increasingly
dedicated himself to nationalism.
And more so, Wagner thought,
that music itself was a national thing,
and that only Germans have a capacity of actual inwardness,
and that music, as the art of inwardness, was real German art.
Wagner expresses profound truths and at the same time,
politically and artistically grave lies.
And one cannot separate Wagner's truths
and Wagner's lies from each other.
They belong together.
You cannot, so to speak, separate the good Wagner,
and the bad Wagner from each other.
The museum probably has a different responsibility than an opera house.
We all need to properly understand Wagner as cultural historians.
And we hope that the visitors can become cultural historians
with us for at least a few hours.