ZGram - 8/19/2003 - "Richard Wagner pardoned by the German Government"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

ZGRAM - Where Truth is Destiny

August 19, 2003

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Little by little, things seem to be falling into place.  You have to 
read between the lines - but then, what else are we doing these days? 
The worthwhile stuff is what shines through, not what is being said.

A few days ago I queried famed German attorney Horst Mahler - was he 
being charged for "defaming the dead" for making that daring speech 
declaring the Big H kaput at the Wartburg?  Nope, was his happy 
reply.  Then I received a call from a young man in Dresden who told 
me in a forceful voice, music to my ears, that "there is hope for 
Germany", that "things are happening".  Next I read of the good 
people of Dachau who are sick to death of Holocaustomania associated 
with their town who want to get rid of their eyesore - dismantle it 
once and for all.  Just a few hours ago I had another call from 
Oregon by a man, a composer, who is looking for - horror! - genuine 
yet tender patriotic poetry that he can set to music.  And now this? 
Another silly taboo gets the boot from none other than Chancellor 
Schroeder? Let's hope he'll be spared to be sent to the doghouse - 
again!

[START]

Telegraph | News | Schröder brings Wagner in from Nazi cold

Tuesday 19 August 2003
Telegraph Network
Schröder brings Wagner in from Nazi cold
By Kate Connolly in Berlin
(Filed: 19/08/2003)

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder yesterday ended a decades-old taboo by becoming
the first post-war German leader to visit the Richard Wagner festival at
Bayreuth, once so favoured by Adolf Hitler.

Mr Schröder, who is keen to prove himself a patron of highbrow culture,
visited the festival in southern Germany with the Japanese prime minister,
Junichiro Koizumi.

They watched a performance of Wagner's Tännhauser, directed by the Frenchman
Philippe Arlaud.

Organisers of the festival, founded by the composer and his wife, Cosima, in
1876, saw yesterday's visit as a sign that Germany's bastion of conservative
culture is finally losing its association with the Nazi era.

Hitler, who visited Bayreuth for the first time in 1923 and was a frequent
visitor throughout the 1930s, hijacked the festival for his own political
purposes, favouring the anti-Semitic Wagner's celebration of Teutonic
greatness through ancient epic story-telling. Since the end of the war,
festival organisers and lovers of Wagner have been trying to claim back the
composer, but political leaders have remained nervous of being seen at the
event.

The Japanese leader acted as a catalyst in breaking the taboo after
expressing his love of Wagner to Mr Schröder last year at the G8 summit in
Kananaskis, Canada, during the football World Cup.

The German chancellor asked Mr Koizumi for a lift in his plane from the
summit to Tokyo so that he could see Germany play in the final. In return Mr
Schröder agreed to invite the Japanese prime minister to Bayreuth.
Mr Schröder is turning meetings with leaders at the opera into something of
a habit.

Later this week he and the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, will
attend a performance of Bizet's Carmen in Verona.

It will be their first meeting since Mr Berlusconi sparked a diplomatic row
when he insulted a German MEP.