David H wrote:

>2.  The finale of Die Meistersinger.  The racist sentiments here are
>extrordinarily vile.  Hans Sach's final monologue is simply grotesque.  His
>view of community is nakedly EXCLUSIVE not inclusive - beware the outsider
>etc etc and clearly aimed at Wagner's archetypal 'non Germans' the Jews.

Well, it may be obvious to David that Hans Sachs' warning at the end of
DIE MEISTERSINGER is "aimed at Wagner's archetypal 'non Germans'"--viz.,
the Jews, but however clear it may seem to him, there are other, and I
think more plausible, ways of reading this passage.  It seems to me much
more likely that the threat of a "false, foreign rule" ["in falscher,
waelscher Majestaet"] that endangers the Germany of the future, in Sachs'
premonition, with its "foreign vanities" ["mit waelschem Tand"] is to be
seen as emanating from France rather than from the Jews.  The threat is an
artistic, not a racial one: the alien artist can, of course, be Jewish,
as in the case of Meyerbeer, but he need not be.  One should not be so
obsessed with Wagner's anti-semitism as to forget that his hatreds were
many and various, and one should always remember how much he suffered and
how much bile he stored up during those early years in Paris.

Nick
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