Here, here, Denis.
Herr Hitler was for the most part uneducated except by the popular notions
of the times. An in-depth understanding of Wagner or those that influenced
Wagner would have gone over a Branau am Inn poor boy.
Heck, it took me years to learn that my parents named me Gretchen because
their lives at that times (mid 50's) were filled with questions...
Gretchenfrage (life questions). It took me longer to realize why they
called me Rachel in public for fear of tarred with the Nazi brush.
People often forget that music is art and that art does not live in a
vacuum. And anything that lives and breaths is always subject to being
manipulated.
I, for one, hope that I will be of the last generation of Germans to live
with the collective guilt and made to feel shame (volksschande) of German
cultural wealth.
Gretchen Ehrenberg