Anton Schnack (21 July 1892 – 26 September 1973)

Early life

Schnack was born in Rieneck, Lower Franconia, Bavaria. He was the third child of a station commander of the German gendarmerie. His older brother Friedrich Schnack (1888–1977) also became a writer, known for his works on natural history and children's literature.^[2]

Schack followed his father's official postings around Bavaria, to Dettelbach, Kronach and Hammelburg. He attended the Progymnasium in Hammelburg (predecessor of the Frobenius-Gymnasium Hammelburg). He became a journalist, and worked in Halberstadt and Bolzano.^[2]

First World War poetry

Schnack served in the German Army in the First World War. He was wounded in 1916. He began to publish poetry in Die Aktion in 1915, but only published poetry on war subjects from 1917. His first war poem was "Schwester Maria" ("Sister Maria"), published in Die Aktion in January 1917.^[1] He continued to publish war poems in three collections that he published in 1919, Strophen der Gier ("Verses of greed"), Der Abenteurer ("The adventurer") and Die tausend Gelächter ("The thousand laughs").

His published his most significant collection of war poetry, Tier rang gewaltig mit Tier ("Beast strove mightily with beast") in 1920, in a limited edition of 1,000 copies.^[2] This short work of around 80 pages contains 60 poems based on the sonnet form, on themes of night and death.^[3] In his 1985 book in German war poetry, Patrick Bridgwater, Emeritus Professor of German at the University of Durham, described Schnack's book as "the best single collection produced by a German war poet in 1914-1918",^[4] and one work, "Nächtliche Landschaft", as the "best poem of the war written in German".

His poem "Verdun" was published in 1919 in the first edition of the socialist journal Das Tribunal. He also wrote a remarkable poem about desertion, entitled Der Überlaufer ("The deserter").^[5]

Later life

After the end of the First World War, he became an editor in Darmstadt. From 1920 to 1925, he was an literary editor and theatre critic for the Neuen Badischen Landes-Zeitung in Mannheim. He married Maria Glöckler on 24 October 1924. He travelled in France, Italy and Dalmatia before returning to Mannheim and then settled in Berchtesgaden. He was one of the 88 writers who pledged their allegiance to Adolf Hitler in October 1933 in a Vow of Most Faithful Allegiance (Gelöbnis treuester Gefolgschaft).^[6] He published lighter popular works in the 1930s and 1940s, including his 1935 work Kleines Lesebuch.^[2] In addition to his poetry, he also wrote some short plays, a few novellas and two novels, Zugvögel der Liebe (1936) and Der finstere Franz (1937). His later works have less literary merit, and are overshadowed by his support for the Nazis.

He moved to Frankfurt am Main in 1937, and joined the Wehrmacht (German Army) in 1944. He was captured by US forces. After the Second World War, he settled to Kahl am Main, where he later died in 1973.^[2]

4.

This is well known too.

Also from Wikipedia.

Racism and antisemitism

"Wagner's writings on race and his antisemitism[171] reflected some trends of thought in Germany during the 19th century. Under a pseudonym in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Wagner published the essay "Das Judenthum in der Musik" in 1850 (originally translated as "Judaism in Music", by which name it is still known, but better rendered as "Jewishness in Music.") The essay attacked Jewish contemporaries (and rivals) Felix Mendelssohn and Giacomo Meyerbeer, and accused Jews of being a harmful and alien element in German culture.

Wagner stated the German people were repelled by Jews' alien appearance and behaviour: "with all our speaking and writing in favour of the Jews' emancipation, we always felt instinctively repelled by any actual, operative contact with them."

He argued that because Jews had no connection to the German spirit, Jewish musicians were only capable of producing shallow and artificial music. They therefore composed music to achieve popularity and, thereby, financial success, as opposed to creating genuine works of art.[172] Wagner republished the pamphlet under his own name in 1869, with an extended introduction, leading to several public protests at the first performances of Die Meistersinger. He repeated similar views in later articles, such as "What is German?" (1878, but based on a draft written in the 1860s).[173]
 
Some biographers[174] have suggested that antisemitic stereotypes are also represented in Wagner's operas. The characters of Mime in the Ring, Sixtus Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger, and Klingsor in Parsifal are sometimes claimed as Jewish representations, though they are not explicitly identified as such in the libretto. Moreover, in all of Wagner's many writings about his works, there is no mention of an intention to caricature Jews in his operas; nor does any such notion appear in the diaries written by Cosima Wagner, which record his views on a daily basis over a period of eight years.[175]
 
Despite his very public views on Jews, throughout his life Wagner had Jewish friends, colleagues and supporters.[176] In his autobiography, Mein Leben, Wagner mentions many friendships with Jews, referring to that with Samuel Lehrs in Paris as "one of the most beautiful friendships of my life."[177]
 
The topic of Wagner and the Jews is further complicated by allegations, which may have been credited by Wagner himself, that he himself was of Jewish ancestry, via his supposed father Geyer.[178] In reality, Geyer was not of Jewish descent, nor were either of Wagner's official parents. References to Wagner's supposed 'Jewishness' were made frequently in cartoons of the composer in the 1870s and 1880s, and more explicitly by Friedrich Nietzsche in his essay "The Wagner Case", where he wrote "a Geyer (vulture) is almost an Adler (eagle)".[179] (Both 'Geyer' and 'Adler' were common Jewish surnames.)
 
Some biographers have asserted that Wagner in his final years came to believe in the racialist philosophy of Arthur de Gobineau, and according to Robert Gutman, this is reflected in the opera Parsifal.[180] Other biographers such as Lucy Beckett[181] believe that this is not true. Wagner showed no significant interest in Gobineau until 1880, when he read Gobineau's "An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races".[182] Wagner had completed the libretto for Parsifal by 1877, and the original drafts of the story date back to 1857. Wagner's writings of his last years indicate some interest in Gobineau's idea that Western society was doomed because of miscegenation between "superior" and "inferior" races.[183]
 
[edit] Other interpretations
 
Wagner's ideas were amenable to socialist interpretations, which is not surprising given the composer's revolutionary inclinations in the 1840s, when many of his ideas on art were being formulated. Thus for example, George Bernard Shaw wrote in The Perfect Wagnerite (1883):
 

[Wagner's] picture of Niblunghome [Shaw's anglicization of Nibelheim, the empire of Alberich in the Ring Cycle] under the reign of Alberic is a poetic vision of unregulated industrial capitalism as it was made known in Germany in the middle of the nineteenth century by Engels's Condition of the Laboring Classes in England [184]
 
Left-wing interpretations of Wagner also inform the writings of Theodor Adorno amongst other Wagner critics.[185] Walter Benjamin gave Wagner as an example of "bourgeois false consciousness", alienating art from its social context.[186]
 
The writer Robert Donington has produced a detailed, if controversial, Jungian interpretation of the Ring cycle. Others have also applied psychoanalytical techniques to Wagner's life and works.[187]
 
Others have sought to place Wagner's work in a more generalised sociohistoric framework. For example, Ehrhard Bahr suggests that 'Wagner provided the middle class with a medium to transfer its familial and political conflicts into a myth of supposedly common Germanic past'.[188]
 
 Nazi appropriation
 
Adolf Hitler was an admirer of Wagner's music and saw in his operas an embodiment of his own vision of the German nation. There continues to be debate about the extent to which Wagner's views might have influenced Nazi thinking.[189] The Nazis used those parts of Wagner's thought that were useful for propaganda and ignored or suppressed the rest.[190] Although Hitler himself was an ardent fan of "the Master", many in the Nazi hierarchy were not and, according to the historian Richard Carr, resented attending these lengthy epics at Hitler's insistence.[191]
 
There is evidence that music of Wagner was used at the Dachau concentration camp in 1933/4 to 'reeducate' political prisoners by exposure to 'national music'.[192] However there seems to be no evidence to support claims, sometimes made,[193] that his music was played at Nazi death camps during the Second World War.[194]
 
Because of the associations of Wagner with antisemitism and Nazism, the performance of his music in the State of Israel has been a source of controversy.[195]