About state and religion
About state and religion is a signature of Richard Wagner , which this on behalf of the young King Ludwig II. Wrote of Bavaria, shortly after he was appointed by the King in the spring of 1864 to Munich. Wagner published this work in the eighth volume of his collected writings and poems .
background
Wagner unexpectedly found himself in the role of advisor and educator to a king. Ludwig had read Wagner's writings on cultural policy at an early age ( The Art and the Revolution , The Artwork of the Future ) and knew his idea of an ideal society. Like Wagner, the young idealist from the house of the Wittelsbachers, who have always promoted art, dreamed of an ideal world, a kingdom of the muses, where art and culture are in the foreground. War, violence, and political intrigues were anathema to him. Ludwig's goal was to establish Munich as a cultural center, as a center of German music. Wagner should support him in this. Seen in this way, Wagner was “a means to an end” for the king in order to be regarded as the greatest art patron in Germany.
Abridged version of the script
Wagner, now over 50 years old, has updated his ideas about the state, royalty and art in this publication. He writes about the seriousness of art, the madness of patriotism, public opinion, an ideal kingdom and the stabilizing role of religion in the state.
- I imagine art in public life as a call to the diversion of life, which should basically only be thought of as a cheerful occupation, but not as a labor. My direction was to imagine an organization of common public as well as domestic life, which would by itself lead to a beautiful design of the human race. At that time I had already designed the seal for my “Ring of the Nibelung”. With this conception, I had unconsciously admitted the truth to myself about human affairs. Here everything is through and through tragic, and the will, which wanted to create a world according to his wishes, can achieve nothing more satisfying than to break himself through a worthy destruction. Even the artist can say of himself: “My kingdom is out of this world”, and perhaps more than anyone living now I have to say this about myself, precisely because of the seriousness with which I apprehend my art. It is now hard that we stand with this otherworldly realm in the middle of this world, which is itself so serious and worried that fleeting distraction only seems appropriate to it, while the need for serious elevation has become alien to it. -
Wagner goes on to write - and thus goes into the intentions of his musical drama Der Ring des Nibelungen - that the essence of the world is blindness and is moved by a dark urge, a blind drive of power and violence that only extends so far light and Provides knowledge when it is necessary to satisfy the needs of the moment. The basic essence of human urge would be greed and lust for pleasure, in order to obtain quick satisfaction of individual passion, if necessary also with force. We owe the state to fear of violence. It expresses the need of blindly desiring individuals for a tolerable way of getting along with themselves. It is a contract through which individuals seek to protect themselves from mutual violence. Just as part of the crop or hunted booty was sacrificed to the gods in natural religion, so in the state the individual sacrificed as much of his egoism as seemed necessary in order to secure the satisfaction of the great rest of it. Here the tendency of the individual is to get the greatest possible assurance against the smallest possible sacrifice. The real tendency of the state is: stability - and rightly, because it corresponds at the same time to the unconscious purpose of every higher human endeavor to really get beyond the basic needs, namely: to the freer development of intellectual abilities. The embodied guarantee for this Basic Law is the monarch. With the person of the king, a state attains its true ideal at the same time. He is the representative of the purely human interest and therefore, in the eyes of the citizen, occupies an almost superhuman position. His rule is therefore: justice, and where this cannot be achieved, exercise grace.
Wagner now continues to write about the relationship between king and people, criticizes the “public opinion” that is manipulated by the newspaper system, which is very detrimental to a monarch, and then comes to the stabilizing factor of religion, which leads “to actual human dignity” .
- In its essence, religion is fundamentally different from the state. Its basis is the feeling of the unhappiness of human existence, the profound dissatisfaction of the purely human need by the state. Its innermost core is negation of the world, i. H. Knowledge of the world as a fleeting and dream-like state based only on a delusion, as well as strived for redemption from it, prepared through renunciation, achieved through faith. The religious idea realizes that there must be another world than this, because in it the inextinguishable instinct for happiness cannot be satisfied. Religion is important not only as a moral law and because of its practical importance for the state, but above all because of its immeasurable value for the individual. The Christian religion has its sublime importance through its dogmas. The religious dogma represents the other, hitherto unrecognized world, and with such infallible certainty and certainty that the religious person who has discovered it falls into the most profound calm. The deepest knowledge allows us to understand that a true calming can come to us in our own inner depths of the mind, but not from the world that is only presented to us from outside.
Wagner closes his remarks by stating that every genuinely great spirit, as it is seldom produced by human generations, is amazed at how it became possible to endure in this world for a long time. This is only possible with the help of art, with which Wagner wanted to underline the king's ambitions to also promote new ways of art - for example his art. Wagner later refined his ideas about the state, art, religion and politics, especially in his writings German Art and German Politics as well as Religion and Art .
swell
- Sven Friedrich (Ed.): Richard Wagner; Works, writings and letters , Berlin 2004
- Richard Wagner: Complete Writings and Seals , Leipzig 1911