The reports in foreign newspapers characterizing the late Siegfried Wagner, son of the famous composer Richard Wagner, and manager of the Wagnerian festival plays at Bayreuth, as an anti-Semite and a member of the National Socialist party, are untrue, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency was informed here today by Bruno Weil, vice-president of the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith, and a friend of the Wagner family.
While the Bayreuth festival plays came under the influence of the National Socialists in 1924, Siegfried Wagner, after lengthy negotiations, promised his friend, Mr. Weil, that he would eliminate all political attachments from the plays. Not only did he keep his promise, Mr. Weil recalled, but he often protested that the American press called him a Hitlerite while only the Bayreuth municipality was under the control of the anti-Semitic Hitlerites, the Wagner House welcoming all races and creeds.
In a last letter to Bruno Weil, Wagner complained that the “Jewish Chronicle” of London was attacking him as an anti-Semite. Mr. Weil today, however, expressed the hope that Siegfried Wagner’s heirs will refrain from manifesting any religious prejudices.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
