1850-1869

In his major theoretical statement, ``Oper und Drama'' (1852), Wagner made similar objections about Meyerbeer. But otherwise, although Wagner’s personal letters contain occasional jibes about Jews and Judaism there was no suggestion over future years that he was likely to return to the attack or revive his earlier anonymous article.

However in his notebook for 1868 (known as the ``Brown Book'') there appear the ominous words ``Consider Judentum.'' It is not clear what provoked this. Amongst the contributing factors may be the death of his ``enemy'' Meyerbeer in 1864, Wagner’s own relative security under the patronage of the King of Bavaria, and increase in his personal confidence now that his Ring cycle was under way and he had completed his operas Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

An intriguing possibility is that, having received his mother’s correspondence (which he subsequently burnt) from his sister in 1868, he discovered that his biological father was the actor and musician Ludwig Geyer, and feared that Geyer was Jewish (which he was not) and that he himself might be Jewish as well. He may therefore also have been influenced by thoughts of his wife Cosima, who was if anything more stridently anti-Semitic than he.