Adolf von Groß

Tomb of Adolf von Groß (Bayreuth-St.Georgen)

Adolf von Groß (born March 25, 1845 in Bamberg , † June 5, 1931 in Bayreuth ) was a close friend of the Richard Wagner family , long-time financial administrator of the Bayreuth Festival and an honorary citizen of Bayreuth.

childhood

Adolf von Groß was born in Bamberg , where his family owned a former monastery that his grandfather Johann Benedikt had bought and where he lived in his youth. His father was the tobacco manufacturer and Bamberg magistrate Rudolph Groß (1802–1864); his mother Henriette, b. Günther (1813–1891) came from a merchant family from Marktbreit .

Career start

Adolf von Groß left Bamberg to initially work as a banker in Hamburg . His next career station was Marseille , where he soon gained an extraordinary position. At the early age of 21, he was given a power of attorney in one of the most important banking firms in Marseille, a position that was unusually significant for his age.

Entry into Bayreuth

After the beginning of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, he was forced to return to Germany. Of the two options of going back to Hamburg or of accepting an invitation to Bayreuth, he decided on the latter and joined Friedrich Feustel's Bayreuth bank . He quickly gained the unreserved trust of his boss. On June 19, 1872, he led Feustel's daughter Henriette Marie into a happy, albeit ultimately childless, marriage.

Relationship with Richard Wagner

Contact with the Wagner family came through Adolf von Groß's father-in-law, the banker Friedrich Feustel. Both Adolf von Groß and his father-in-law were enthusiastic admirers of Richard Wagner. At first the Feustel banking house only supported Richard Wagner financially, but soon von Groß not only became his confidante in financial matters, but also in domestic and family matters. As early as 1882 he was the one who ensured the existence of the Bayreuth Festival . In the winter of 1882/1883 he traveled twice to Venice and from there, with the final official signature of Richard Wagner, brought back the document which determined the festival for 1883 and which, after the death of Richard Wagner in February of the same year, saved the continuation of the festival should mean.

Rescue of the Bayreuth Festival

After Richard Wagner's death in 1883, his widow, Cosima Wagner , took over the management of the festival at the suggestion of Hans von Wolhaben . Here Adolf Groß was at her side in all financial and administrative questions; he had also been appointed by the composer to be his children's guardian. He sacrificed a lot of effort and money and selflessly carried the whole burden both in the first difficult years and in the later better times and the difficult and varied business tasks of the entire festival company all by himself. He led the Bayreuth Festival to extraordinary successes. After the death of Ludwig II , he traveled to Munich in order to save the funds promised by the king for the festival. Difficulties arose because the Minister of Crailsheim refused his request on the grounds that the king was insane and that his letters and all his actions were therefore invalid. Adolf von Groß replied coolly: “The letter was written two years before the appointment of the Minister von Crailsheim. If this letter is viewed as the work of a mentally ill person, then the appointment of Baron von Crailsheim as minister is also invalid ”. After several negotiations, von Groß was able to secure the funds for the festival.

In the 1920s, however, von Groß did not succeed in protecting the festival from the consequences of inflation . It came to a falling out with the then festival director Siegfried Wagner , so that Groß left the management of the festival.

Honor and end of life

For his services to the preservation of the festival idea, von Groß received the honorary citizenship of the city of Bayreuth in 1901 . The Wagner biographer Carl Friedrich Glasenapp called him the "Bismarck of Bayreuth".

Groß died on June 5, 1931 in Bayreuth after a life full of friendship with Richard Wagner. After his death, a street was named after him in the Gartenstadt district of Bayreuth at the foot of the Green Hill . It was initially called Großstraße and was called Adolf-von-Groß-Straße from 1935 onwards.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Festival saved from drowning in: Nordbayerischer Kurier from March 25, 2020, p. 12.
2. ↑ Rosa and Volker carbon home: Bayreuth from AZ. Lexicon of Bayreuth street names . Rabenstein, Bayreuth 2009, ISBN 978-3-928683-44-9 , pp. 19 .