Wagner Festival wrestles with word 'Führer'

In Germany, the word "Führer," which translates as "leader," is directly associated with Adolf Hitler.

No matter the context, when that word crops up, many Germans think of the Nazi leader facing huge cheering crowds. The term "Führer," as Hitler wanted to be called, has a bad connotation.

Conveniently, the German language allows for alternative words. In tourism, you can use "Reiseleiter" instead of "Reiseführer," for a tour guide; in sports "Spielmacher" is an alternative for "Spielführer," the game leader.

Getting rid of the word 'Führer' in Bayreuth

This season, use of the word was an issue at the Bayreuth Festival, also known as the Richard Wagner Opera Festival.

A passage in Richard Wagner's romantic opera "Lohengrin" goes, "Behold the Duke of Brabant, for leader (Führer) be he appointed unto you."

After the dress rehearsal, Katharina Wagner, artistic director of the Bayreuth Festival and Richard Wagner's great-granddaughter, asked tenor Klaus Florian Vogt, who sang the role of Lohengrin, to replace the word "Führer" with "Schützer" (protector).

It's a common substitute that many opera houses use, argued Wagner.

 "We in Bayreuth should be particularly sensitive, because we have a special political background and therefore a special responsibility," the festival director added.

Hitler was a big Wagner fan

The special responsibility refers to the festival's Nazi ties in its past. Adolf Hitler was an ardent fan of Richard Wagner, a permanent guest at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus fascinated by Wagner's heroic tales and the megalomania with which he could identify so well. The composer himself openly wrote about his antisemitic views.

Wagner's operatic sagas fueled Hitler's ambitions for power, said music historian Jens Malte Fischer and Richard Wagner Museum Director Sven Friedrich in the DW documentary "Why Hitler adored Richard Wagner." Inspired by Wagner's heroic figures, including the knight Lohengrin and the Roman tribune Rienzi, Hitler's dream of becoming the Führer took shape — and eventually became real.

So why not replace "Führer" with "protector" in the opera?

Changing the words is taking things too far, said Christian Thielemann, Lohengrin conductor at the Bayreuth Festival, even referring to the dispute as a "Führer scandal" in Germany's Die Welt daily.

But Katharina Wager was adamant that the tenor had so very clearly enunciated the word "Führer" in the dress rehearsal — most likely she felt it begged a substitute, and she wanted to avoid images of Hitler popping up in the minds of the Wagner audience at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus this year.

 

This article was originally written in German.