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An exhibition about Richard Wagner at

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Deutsches Historisches Museum

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is a very interesting challenge.

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Richard Wagner is without a doubt a great figure

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of modernism, a great figure of the 19th century.

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What we want to show, is Wagner as the inventor of modernity,

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Wagner as inventor of the so-called myth of modernity.

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The myth of modernity being,

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to invent and configure a complex of emotions.

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How does one feel in the 19th century?

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How does one learn to feel, to feel anew, and also to feel German?

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That’s the second level of the question.

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We work with the title "Richard Wagner and the Nationalization of Feeling“,

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and we think of the feeling on two levels.

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Firstly, Wagner taught his audience to feel through music,

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and secondly, to feel German.

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So, as he got older, Wagner increasingly

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dedicated himself to nationalism.

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And more so, Wagner thought,

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that music itself was a national thing,

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and that only Germans have a capacity of actual inwardness,

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and that music, as the art of inwardness, was real German art.

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Wagner expresses profound truths and at the same time,

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politically and artistically grave lies.

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And one cannot separate Wagner's truths

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and Wagner's lies from each other.

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They belong together.

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You cannot, so to speak, separate the good Wagner,

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and the bad Wagner from each other.

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The museum probably has a different responsibility than an opera house.

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We all need to properly understand Wagner as cultural historians.

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And we hope that the visitors can become cultural historians

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with us for at least a few hours.