The inventive director of the Bayreuth Pageant wrote a letter to the Jewish journalist Michel Friedman sorry. “A mere celebration of celebration can be insufferable for me,” wrote Katharina Wagner in a letter to Friedman, from which the South German newspaper (SZ) quoted with the permission of the competition director. “I am actually very sorry,” wrote Richard Wagner’s great-granddaughter.
The background to the controversy is that this Cancellation of an eventon the Friedman ought to have given a speech about anti-Semitism and coming to phrases with the Nazi previous. In Bayreuth There was speak of a postponement for safety causes. There are doubts about this justification. “I do not prefer it when the general public and I are taken for fools,” Friedman had stated.
Because the SZ reported that the occasion ought to now happen. Wagner assured Friedman within the letter that he would maintain the appointment as deliberate. “I discover your phrases of remorse to me honest and credible, and I gladly settle for your private request for an apology,” Friedmann additionally instructed the newspaper. »If somebody strikes, you must transfer with them.«
Knobloch spoke of a “declaration of chapter”
The cancellation and the explanations for it sparked a debate caused a lot of criticism. The competition’s dealing with of this difficulty “has sadly been greater than unlucky in the previous few days,” stated the Bavarian State Minister for Science and Artwork, Markus Blume (CSU), and known as for an answer. Additionally the Bavarian one Anti-Semitism Commissioner Ludwig Spaenle rejected the matter.
“I haven’t got the phrases to specific my anger and disappointment,” stated the previous president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Charlotte Knobloch. The cancellation was “a declaration of chapter on each stage,” stated the chairwoman of the Jewish Group for Munich and Higher Bavaria.