It was to be expected that a meeting between the Iron Chancellor and the Lord of the Valkyries would be an epochal one, and so it has been represented in many early biographies of Wagner. Wagnerians tended to portray the meeting as one of great Aryan minds who were not just creators of German culture and nationhood, but as repulsors of non-German elements in the new Germany.
The significance of the encounter was mostly for Wagner. By 1871, the Ring Cycle was mostly complete, and that year Wagner was granted land by the Bayreuth town council in order to establish a regular Wagner festival in the town. Bismarck became Chancellor of the newly unified Germany in 1871, and became a ‘Serene Highness’ as well, so this was hardly a meeting of equals (Wagner had sent Bismarck an embarrassing poem in his praise).
Wagner returned from the meeting and described it to Cosima (his wife) who recorded in her diary that it had been a great success: Richard had been very impressed by the humility fo Bismarck, who observed to Wagner that all he had done in public life was obtain a few signatures and find the ; they discussed art and politics: ll was charm and sympathy; the meeting was ‘precious’ to a satisfied Wagner, who somehow refrained from asking for help with his great cultural project at Bayreuth.
The diary entry, whoever, is suspect, and has been amended at some later date – possibly by Wagner himself. Bismarck’s own account of the meeting is a good deal less warm than Wagner’s and the amendments may be to designed to conceal a less than joyful first account. Bismarck’s own account of the meeting is substantially the same in terns of the course of the meeting, but the tone is quite different: superior, even sarcastic. Bismarck write to a friend that Wagner seemed to expect a duet to be played out, but went away disappointed, without even asking for money for Bayreuth.
What Happened Next
Under the Nazis, this meeting was seen as a pivotal moment in the history of German culture, but Bismarck’s disdainful account must accurately reflect the substance of the meeting. As Wagner’s biographer Hannu Salmi says, Bismarck had merely offhandedly ‘offered a series of compliments which he himself regarded as insignificant mannerisms’. Wagner later wrote to Bismarck twice, in 1873 and 1875, pointing out that Bismarck could aid the rebirth of the German spirit through the funding of Wagner’s operatic art. Bismarck did not reply.