Word: minna
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Obligation. The letters deal largely with the period of Wagner's tempestuous first marriage (to Actress Minna Planer), when he composed The Flying Dutchman, Tannähuser, Lohengrin and Tristan und Isolde, and they hardly reveal a new Richard Wagner. Rather, they amplify the old one-the "Archegotist" who called on his friends to pick up the checks and often gave them his scorn in return, the German genius who believed the world owed him both a living and its unbounded love, and offered it great operas in return...
...letter to wife Minna, demanding separation after 14 years of bickering marriage, he further uncloaks his character. ". . . You cling to the peacefulness and permanence of existing conditions-I must break them to satisfy my inner being; you are capable of sacrificing everything ... to 'have a respected position in the community,' which I despise . . . You think only of the past, with nostalgia and yearning-I give that up and think only of the future . . . You cling to people, I to causes; you to certain human beings, I to humanity...