A bible for the Wagner Museum
A bible from 1870, signed by Richard Wagner himself, is presented to the Richard Wagner Museum in Lucerne.
A Zurich gallery owner donated a Bible to the museum, which the atheist Wagner acquired in 1870 from "Franz Josef Schiffmann's Buchhandlung und Antiquariat in Luzern", as the cover reveals. Wagner had lived in Lucerne since 1866, in the Tribschen country house on the lake. His mistress Cosima von Bülow gave him his third illegitimate child in 1869. This son was to bear the name "Wagner". However, this was only possible through the marriage of his parents.
On August 25, 1870, 150 years ago, the wedding of Cosima and Richard Wagner took place in the reformed parish of St. Matthew's Church. Pastor Johann Heinrich Tschudi performed the marriage ceremony. Cosima had previously divorced her husband Hans von Bülow and, as a Catholic, had to convert to Protestantism. She took this upon herself for the sake of her son. Pastor Tschudi was cooperative and allowed the child to be baptized and registered on 4 September 1870, after a delay of over a year, and thus recognized as Wagner's son.
