Winifred Wagner

Descripción

"Winifred Wagner's story is a remarkable one. The English-born orphan who became Richard Wagner's daughter-in-law and one of Adolf Hitler's closest personal friends was for years at the heart of German cultural and political life." "Born Winifred Williams in 1897, she was adopted by distant relatives living in a utopian 'good life' settlement near Berlin. In 1915 the eighteen-year-old Winifred married into the Wagner family, which desperately needed an heir to secure the Wagner heritage and retain control of the festival site at Bayreuth in Bavaria. She went on to have four children by her husband, Siegfried, an erstwhile confirmed bachelor thirty years her senior, and supplanted the composer's despotic widow, Cosima, at the head of the Wagner clan." "In 1923, shortly before the Munich Putsch, Hitler made a pilgrimage to Wagner's grave in Bayreuth. And so began a close, lifelong friendship between 'Winnie' and 'Wolf'. She became a founder member of the Nazi party and from 1933 the little provincial town of Bayreuth at festival time was the centre of the German political world." "Winnie enjoyed enormous favour and a glamorous lifestyle during the Nazi years, then endured bombing and deprivation during the war, and after it was put on trial for supporting Nazi war crimes. Despite this, Winifred's devotion to Hitler was undiminished: described as 'the last Nazi in Germany', she remained loyal to the memory of 'Wolf' till her death in 1980."--BOOK JACKET.