2 Answers

  1. The answer really lies on the surface – because Wagner was a great composer, and a German composer (I emphasize, not a German composer, but a German composer). On the one hand, he was a reformer of opera – he turned a previously entertaining performance into a musical drama, synthesizing together music and dramatic action (one cannot exist without the other), in which the era itself was expressed. It was also important that Wagner wrote all of his operas (or rather, almost all of them – except for the very first known one, Rienzi) exclusively on German material. Wagner in this sense can be called the soul of the epoch – his work coincided with – and intensified-the search for Germans for themselves, their place in this world, and the culmination of Wagner's work as a musician, publicist and philosopher coincided with the creation of a new German Empire – a new one, breaking ties with the experience of the Holy Roman Empire (including literally “alive”, in the war with Austria, a fragment of the old empire). And Wagner was one of those who can be called the “midwives” of the new Germany and the new self-perception of Germans.

    I won't talk about Nietzsche, I'll talk about Hitler. According to his biographers, as well as interviews with a friend of his youth, August “Gustl” Kubicka, the young Adolf Hitler, living in Vienna after the death of his father and preparing for admission to art school, tried to participate in the cultural life of the Austrian capital. I must say that his tastes were formed quite quickly – to put it simply, he preferred classicism and art (painting, music, architecture) Everything that was created at the time when he became an adult. Simultaneously with his artistic tastes, political ones were gradually taking shape – and he, like many other Austrian Germans, became a pan-Germanist (his anti-Semitism would also arise in Vienna, but a little later). Austrian pan-Germanism implied a condemnation of the policies of the House of Habsburg and a focus on the northern neighbor, the German Hohenzollern Empire. From all this, one can understand why Hitler liked Wagner – he was the expression of everything that he liked in art and politics (or even in life in general). But this is not enough – Hitler experienced Wagner's music in a special way; he actually found himself in Wagner's heroes, sacrificing themselves for a great goal in the midst of a hostile world. In his imagination, he saw himself exactly like this, which is what Gustl Kubick's next memory remains (the impression of the first visit to the opera “Rienzi” about a character in Roman medieval history): “I asked him for his opinion on the show. He gave me an aloof, almost hostile look. Adolf was standing in front of me. He grabbed both of my hands and held them tightly. It was a gesture I'd never seen before. I could tell by the pressure of his hands that he was deeply moved. His eyes were feverishly bright with excitement. The words didn't come out of his mouth as smoothly as usual, but came out sharp and hoarse. I could tell by the sound of his voice that he was deeply moved by this experience… Never before and never again did I hear Adolf Hitler speak as he did when we stood so alone under the stars, as if we were the only creatures in the world… At that moment, something very unusual caught my eye, something I had never seen in him before. When he spoke to me in agitation, it was as if some other “I” was being turned out of him, and he was caught in it with the same tenacity that I was. By no means was it as one says of an exciting, engaging speaker that he is intoxicated by his own words. On the contrary! Rather, I had the impression that he himself was experiencing with surprise, even with fascination, what at that moment was bursting out of him with primordial force. It was an ecstatic state, a state of complete ecstasy. In his magnificent, fascinating paintings, he developed for me his future and the future of his people… Now he was talking about the mission he would one day receive from the people, to lead them out of slavery and into the heights of freedom. He spoke about a special mission that will be assigned to him…“Then, meeting many years later, Hitler told Kubick that' IT '(i.e., his political career) began with this story. Moreover, Wagner, his music (especially “Rienzi”), became his love to death – all NSDAP congresses began with the overture (symphonic introduction; unfortunately, I did not find a reference German recording of Nazi times conducted by the great Furtwengler) to this opera.:

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/wqryZ-p1xBY?wmode=opaque

  2. I'll answer Nietzsche's question. I think they were united by a spiritual unity: from their mutual fascination with the art of the ancient Greeks and their love of Schopenhauer's work to their aspirations for the reconstruction of the world and the revival of the national spirit.
    However, this did not last long, only three years. Friedrich at some point disowned Wagner, even wrote little books “The Incident of Wagner” and “Nietzsche against Wagner”. One of the reasons for the quarrel was Wagner's anti-Semitism. Where Nietzsche spent the last few years we know perfectly well, but when he was shown a portrait of Wagner, he was already in a frenzy, saying something along the lines of “And I dedicated books to this man.”Given the above, by the end of his life, he hated him rather than loved him

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