Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
Gay gave the title as "Blood of the Wälsungs," with a date of 1905. I don't see it on the Wikipedia list.
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I see, thanks a lot for this. The german title is
Wälsungenblut. This story is well known, it's part of the normal german
pocket book edition of Mann's early stories. The main protagonists are a jewish pair of siblings, but this story is usually not considered antisemitic, too. You can have a look at the german Wikipedia page if you'd like to.
The problems concerning the first printing of this story 1906 came because Mann feared that people might think that he is describing his own wife Katia and her brother Klaus in an incestous relationship. They had an affluent jewish background. At least this is what is usually concidered as the reason.
Maybe this is a bit of a missunderstanding because the jewish brother and sister perform some kind of Richard Wagner Kult in Wälsungenblut. But you have to keep in mind that this story was written before 1933. Richard Wagner's music was extremely polpular at the time Mann wrote this story, among germans and among german jews.
As we know today some national socialists liked Wagner for whatever reason. But the line Wagner = Nazi is wrong, even the equation Wagner = Antisemitism is wrong, although Wagner wrote essays that contain higly problematic antisemetic sterotypes at some point.
But thanks to this conversation I found out about Gay's works, I didn't know him or his books. Thanks a lot for sharing this, although this lead to some sort of controversy. I had a look at the Wikipedia page and some of his books and I think he's a quite interesting person. At least his biography and his own interests are.