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Lead book review

Hitler’s admiration has severely damaged Wagner’s reputation

Wagner gripped the communal mind for decades after his death. Philip Hensher examines his enduring influence

12 September 2020

9:00 AM

12 September 2020

9:00 AM

Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music Alex Ross

4th Estate, pp.784, 30

In the early 1920s a French businessman, Leon Bel, was looking for a name for his new brand of processed cheese. He remembered seeing a meat wagon on the first world war battlefields with the sardonic name ‘La Wachkyrie’. Like the Valkyries in Wagner, it brought solace to fallen soldiers in the field.

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