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Book Summary and Reviews of The Wagner Clan by Jonathan Carr

The Wagner Clan by Jonathan Carr

The Wagner Clan

The Saga of Germany's Most Illustrious and Infamous Family

by Jonathan Carr

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  • Dec 2007, 0 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

A family saga as riveting as any opera, and a matchless mirror of Germany’s rise, fall, and resurrection. Richard Wagner was many things—composer, philosopher, philanderer, failed revolutionary, and virulent anti-Semite—and his descendants have carried on his complex legacy. Now, in The Wagner Clan, biographer Jonathan Carr retraces the path of the renowned composer and his descendants. Along the way, Carr offers glimpses of Franz Liszt (whose illegitimate daughter Cosima married Wagner); Friedrich Nietzsche; Arthur Schopenhauer; Alberto Toscanini; Joseph Goebbels; Hermann Göring; and the “Wolf” himself, Adolf Hitler, a passionate fan of the Master’s music and an adopted uncle to Wagner’s grandchildren.

Wagner’s British-born daughter-in-law, Winifred, was a close friend of Hitler’s and seemed momentarily positioned to marry him after the death of her husband. All through the war the Bayreuth Festival, begun by the Master himself, was supported by Hitler, who had to fill out the meager audience with fighting men and SS officers. After the war, the festival was dark for a decade until Wagner’s offspring—with characteristic ambition and cunning—revived it.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Carr's sprightly, fluent narrative places the family in its historical and intellectual context without reducing it to the symbolic effigy it has often become." - Publishers Weekly.

"Starred Review." - Kirkus Reviews.

"The Wagner legacy is as much a drama as that of the life of the composer himself. An excellent read for academic and large public libraries." - Library Journal

This information about The Wagner Clan was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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