Dear, highly esteemed Mr. Wagner,
esteemed guests, old and new!
We have all gathered here to pay our respects to you, dear Mr. Wagner, to show you our esteem, and to thank you from the bottom of our hearts. “Unfortunately, true gratitude cannot be expressed in words”, Goethe said. I will try nonetheless.
If the term ‘life’s work’ applies to a decades-spanning continuum of tireless activity for a cause, then it absolutely applies to your life’s work, Bayreuth Festival, dear Mr. Wagner, which you led for 58 years in every conceivable way, and which you shaped and molded like no other. Before your tenure, only 39 festivals had taken place since their inception in 1876. 58 years – that is now significantly more than half a human lifetime, and there are probably only a few among us who can even remember a festival management other than the one that began in 1951 together with your brother and was then exercised solely by you for 42 years after his early death. Not least for this reason, you and the festival have long been completely merged in the public consciousness in an identification that is as unique as it is absolute. Like no other, you embody Bayreuth Festival; personality and institution virtually become one. For some, this particular circumstance has always been ideal; for others, it was the challenging and objectionable aspect with which they had to contend.
For us, who had the privilege of accompanying and supporting you, dear Mr. Wagner, over longer or shorter distances, in front of, on, and behind the stage for a long piece, it fills us with joy, I may say, that we could be there and walk our path together with you. And it fills us with gratitude for you, who were everything in one to us: the principal, the boss, and not least a father figure – not one of superhuman or even terrifying dimensions, but rather the exact opposite, namely deeply human and understanding, no less concerned about the individual than about the whole. Unpretentious, pragmatic, and endowed with an eminently unerring sense for what is practically feasible and necessary. Anyone who had even a brief association with you could certainly tell their own story about it; it would fill volumes. Nothing human was or is alien to you. It is by no means easy to have to get used to managing without your immediate, worldly-wise assistance and advice from now on. It sounds terribly cliché and yet it is true: You will be missed, we will miss you.
That you are one of the last great figures of German cultural and theatrical life, you have probably heard countless times, as well as the designations “Nestor of theater directors” and “Patriarch”. You always met such pathetic transfiguration and exaggeration with gentle mockery and that primal, healthy realism which ensured that you remained firmly rooted in your Franconian soil, unchallenged, and did not settle in some cloud-cuckoo-land. This astute and clear sense of reality certainly contributed decisively to the fact that the festival is soon to take place for the 100th time. And it prevented you from ‘sacrificing yourself,’ for nothing less would suit you than a ‘victim role.’ With what joy – without recklessness –, with what passion – without any hint of obsession – you fulfilled your often complicated office as festival director, whether in everyday life or during festival season, year after year – that is indeed exemplary.
Yet, despite all your tolerance and liberality, especially towards artistic views and demands, you were unyielding and very uncomfortable with negligence, sloppiness, indifference, and the slightest sign of contempt for humanity. You simply cared for everything and everyone, kindly and strictly; some might have found that bothersome. And you lived such virtues as a sense of duty, discipline, and responsibility, which have now seemingly become obsolete and are often ridiculed, without particularly emphasizing them. But precisely that makes you a role model.
Dear Mr. Wagner, I take the liberty, paradoxically, of applying the term ‘untimely’ to you, which I believe you embody in a wonderful way, even though you are anchored in the time and space of the present. However, ‘untimely’ is understood as a quality of working with one’s whole being “against the time and thereby on the time and hopefully in favor of a coming time.” This is how Nietzsche defined it. – You are unbowed by the shallow zeitgeist and have never allowed yourself to be corrupted by it. You are a thoroughly authentic person who has walked his path straightforwardly. That is worthy of all honor, and for that, too, you are to be abundantly thanked.
In your autobiography, you wrote: “I can claim without exaggeration that I have not been afraid in my life, afraid in the sense of existential fear, inferiority, and surrender, in the sense of faintheartedness and despair. … In my position as festival director, I felt and feel myself to be a mediator and moderator, in its original meaning, as one who, in the Bayreuth workshop, does not force anything or anyone together, but rather brings them together to allow a mutually fruitful artistic field of tension to be generated anew again and again. … Besides numerous other abilities and skills, two qualities are particularly necessary in the exercise of my activity, which are fortunately inherent in my physical and psychological constitution: good nerves and humor.” – An apt self-description, to which, in essence, nothing needs to be added.
Dear Mr. Wagner, you have been a man of the theater throughout your entire life and work, and you have traversed its “mire of horrors and majesties”, as your grandfather called it, in every direction. Now you will leave the stage. This is for all of us a moving, touching, and indeed sad moment, memorable and full of remembrance. For with this, no mere directorship ends, no festival director simply retires – no, and it does not seem exaggerated to say that with this, an era ends. You have discovered new paths and paved many ways for many; on the eternally mysterious continent of art, you have always been a curious explorer and, at times, a risk-taking adventurer, but never a cynical gambler who carelessly puts everything at stake. I hope and I believe you are leaving the stage as a happy person, with an unsentimental smile and a cheerful wave.
All our best, our deepest, and most heartfelt wishes accompany you! And we cheerfully bow before you in grateful solidarity, in friendship, and in love.
Bayreuth, August 28, 2008
Peter Emmerich