Online campaign to save a Wagner project
The historical-critical edition of Richard Wagner's letters is at risk because the maximum funding period has been reached. Sven Friedrich, Director of the Richard Wagner Museum in Bayreuth, has therefore initiated an online petition to fund the completion of the edition after all.
The historical-critical edition was begun in 1967. The most recent volume is number 27 with letters from 1875. If the edition were to be stopped now, the Bayreuth chapter would be almost completely missing, said Friedrich according to a report in the Neue Musikzeitung (nmz). The letters, which have not yet been edited, include the creation of Wagner's late so-called Regenerationsschriften, "which link his momentous racial anti-Semitism with his aesthetics of art religion and cultural theory", the petition states.
According to the University of Würzburg, the German Research Foundation (DFG) has funded the edition from 2006 to the end of 2022 as a long-term project with three staff positions, writes nmz. Further funding has been provided by the Upper Franconia Foundation in the form of printing cost subsidies for the edition volumes. The annotation of the outstanding letters has already been prepared. Around one million euros, spread over five years, are required for the remaining funding.
