Winifred Wagner: A Life at the Heart of Hitler's Bayreuth - Hardcover

Hamann, Brigitte

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 015101308X ISBN 13: 9780151013081

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006

Synopsis

Winifred Wagner was a British-born orphan who became Richard Wagner’s daughter-in-law, head of the Bayreuth festival, and one of Adolf Hitler’s closest personal friends.  A no-nonsense Englishwoman who displaced Wagner’s formidable widow to become head of the family and the Festival, Winifred fell adolescently in love with Hitler and made Bayreuth the summer gathering place for the Nazi elite from 1933 to 1939. And yet this staunch German nationalist leaped to the aid of Jewish acquaintances and artists as they were increasingly threatened by exile, imprisonment, or death.

Drawing on previously unavailable sources, Brigitte Hamann has produced a meticulously researched and elegantly written biography—the story of the private Hitler and his monumental obsessions, and of the headstrong, dedicated, and misguided woman who remained loyal to his memory until her death in 1980.

About this title

Review:

'Consistently enthralling book... displays truly impressive enterprise in locating quite new sources' -- THES

'Hamann has provided the fullest indictment so far of Wagner family guilt' -- The Scotsman

'Intelligent account... revealing a part of the Bayreuth story which the Wagner family has done its best to conceal’ -- Scotland on Sunday

‘Comprehensive, scholarlily researched, lucid, objective, and well- written...a mine of fascinating information...Highly recommended’ -- Wagner News

‘Hamann has approached her subject with powerful sensitivity and scholarship and the translation by Alan Bance flows swimmingly’ -- The Irish Times

‘Relies on impressive investigative ingenuity to unravel the web of connections between the Third Reich and the Bayreuth clan’ -- TLS

‘Riveting read’ -- The Sunday Times

‘This book reveals the human side of Hitler without diminishing his evil... a restrained, documentary biography, meticulously detailed and scholarly’ -- Brighton Evening Argus

‘A family-from-hell story, but somehow appropriate to the excesses of Wagner’ -- Sir Peter Hall, Observer

About the Author:

BRIGITTE HAMANN is a historian. Her study of Hitler’s early years, Hitler’s Vienna, was critically acclaimed and an international bestseller. She lives in Vienna.

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 015101308X
• ISBN 13: 9780151013081
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 582