Siegfried Wagner's Homosexual Circle

Siegfried Wagner (1869-1930), son of the great German opera composer Richard Wagner (father and son in photo at right), displayed a feminine demeanor while growing up and was greatly attached to his mother. During his student days he often dressed up as a ballerina, and he had affairs with several of his fellow male students.

Siegfried, who was also the grandson of pianist/composer Franz Liszt, became part of a circle of high-profile closeted homosexual men, including English composer Clement Harris, tenor Max Lorenz, writer Oscar Wilde, illustrator Franz Stassen and Prince Philipp of Eulenburg. In 1892 Clement Harris and 23-year-old Siegfried set off on an around-the-world tour together, and the two fell deeply in love. Wagner kept a portrait of Harris on his desk for the rest of his life.

When journalist Maximilian Harden later accused Prince Philipp of Eulenburg and others close to Kaiser Wilhelm II of homosexuality (Harden-Eulenburg Affair), Siegfried either had to get married or be exposed for what he was. So it was that in 1915 at the age of 46, after strong prodding from his mother, Siegfried Wagner married an 18-year-old Englishwoman named Winifred Klindworth, with whom he had four children, thus providing heirs for the continuation of the Wagner dynasty. His sexual orientation, however, became the source of both scandal and concerted attempts to erase it from the history of the Wagner family.

Siegfried Wagner in his twenties (left).




When the Wagner dynasty’s papers were bequeathed to Bayreuth’s Richard Wagner Foundation in 1973, Winifred Wagner included Siegfried’s musical scores but withheld her husband's correspondence. This was consistent with the family’s notorious stalling and purging of any revelations that would taint the legacy of Richard Wagner.


In response to Harden’s insinuations about his sexual nature, Siegfried replied, “There was ugly gossip about Frederick the Great, too, the greatest king of all time – and he made Prussia great and strong! So don't worry. I won't defile the House of the Festival.” The irony in that statement is that all the rumors and gossip about Frederick the Great were true.

Siegfried did not give up social and sexual relations with homosexuals, however, and he and Franz Stassen (1869-1949), a gay artist who had served as the best man at Siegfried’s wedding, continued a social and artistic relationship that lasted for decades. Stassen (at left) was a noted Art Nouveau painter and illustrator who also married. Siegfried introduced Stassen to Wagnerian tenor Max Lorenz (1901-1975), much admired by Hitler, even though Lorenz was a gay man married to a Jewish woman. For a time Stassen and Lorenz were involved in an affair. When Hitler, who was a financial supporter of the Bayreuth Festival, could no longer publicly endorse Lorenz, it was Siegfried’s wife Winifred who used her influence to rescue Bayreuth’s star heldentenor from public disgrace, exile and possible imprisonment over a charge of homosexuality.

Most historians concede that Hitler and Winnifred (below) carried on an affair after Siegfried’s death in 1930; there were even rumors of a possible marriage. Although Winifred was proud of her association with Hitler, when he visited her at Bayreuth, she took pains to conceal the connection. Hitler would register at the Hotel Bube in nearby Bad Berneck, and Winnifred would send her own car to pick him up, so that Hitler's ostentatious Mercedes would not be seen pulling into the driveway at Wahnfried, the Wagner family's villa built for Richard Wagner by King Ludwig II of Bavaria.

Following in his father’s footsteps, Siegfried Wagner was also a composer, but his operas, although popular during his lifetime, never entered the standard repertoire. In 1896 Siegfried began conducting at the Bayreuth Festival and from 1906-1930 was the festival’s sole artistic director. In Siegfried’s controversial 1930 staging of his father’s opera Tannhäuser, he boldly embellished several scenes with scantily clad male teenagers. In the opening Venusberg bacchanal scene their costume consisted of ballet slippers and loincloths -- nothing else. Don't believe me? There is archival video on YouTube.

Siegfried dedicated one of his eighteen operas to Franz Stassen, who designed stunning illustrations for the programs for Wagnerian opera productions at Bayreuth (example at right). Franz also published homoerotic drawings and paintings and went on to become a major player in the Teutonic Art Nouveau style. During the last decade of his life Stassen wrote recollections about his male "soul mate", thus publicly hinting at his own homosexuality. An aside -- Stassen was adept at illustrating male posteriors, most often naked, in a fashion we would describe these days as "perfect bubble butts".

In the previous decade Stassen had also become associated with the Nazi Party. He created four important tapestries for Hitler's Reich Chancellery in Berlin that illustrated motifs of the Germanic Edda sagas. In gratitude, Hitler awarded him the title of professor in 1939.

After 1941 Franz lived openly with his male partner and professed his homosexual orientation, but the Third Reich generously overlooked and ignored this declaration. In the final phase of World War II, Hitler included Stassen in the Gottbegnadeten (Gifted by God) list of important artists most crucial to Nazi culture.

Wagnerian tenor Max Lorenz (right) was homosexual as well, but in 1932 he married Lotte Appel, a Jewish singer who was aware of his sexual orientation going into the marriage. Max’s homosexuality was tolerated by the Nazis as a well-known secret, because Lorenz was a favorite of Hitler. When Lorenz was dragged into court because of an affair with a young man, Hitler advised Winifred Wagner, the director of the Bayreuth Festival after Siegfried’s death in 1930, that Lorenz would not be suitable for the Festival. She replied that in that case she would have to close the Festival, because, “...without Lorenz, there can be no Bayreuth.” Lorenz was thus retained.

As for his Jewish wife Lotte, Max insisted on being open about his marriage of convenience, which was taken as a provocation by the Nazis. Once when Lorenz was away from his house, the SS burst in and tried to take Lotte and her mother away. At the last moment Lotte Lorenz was able to make a phone call to Hermann Göring’s sister, and the SS was ordered to leave their residence and not bother the women. Göring stated in a letter dated March 21, 1943, that Lorenz was under his personal protection, and that no action should be taken against him, his wife, or her mother.

Siegfried Wagner -- Violin Concerto in One Movement (1915):

Second Movement (1927) of Siegfried Wagner’s Symphony in C (in the earlier 1925 first version of the symphony, the slow movement was recycled from the prelude to Der Friedensengel, an opera written in 1914):

Composer Clement Harris

Clement Hugh Gilbert Harris (1871-1897) was an English composer and pianist who was an intimate friend of Siegfried Wagner, the homosexual son of famed composer Richard Wagner and grandson of pianist/composer Franz Liszt. Although Clement was born in Wimbledon and educated at Harrow, he met Siegfried while a student in Germany, where he was studying piano with Clara Schumann, wife of composer Robert Schumann. Clement was wealthy, handsome, sensitive and charismatic, and Siegfried was soon besotted with him.

In 1892 Clement and twenty-three-year-old Siegfried embarked on a six month world cruise and fell deeply in love during that journey. At the onset of their tour, which began in London*, Clement introduced Siegfried to Oscar Wilde. Upon arrival in Hong Kong, Clement convinced Siegfried to abandon his plans to become an architect and instead take up a career as a composer and conductor, thus following in the footsteps of his famous father.

During that same voyage Harris sketched his symphonic poem Paradise Lost, after Milton. The work was completed in 1895 and performed that year in the exclusive spa town of Bad Homburg, Germany, in the presence of the Prince of Wales, the King of Belgium, and various and assorted  Grand Dukes and Duchesses. However, the English premiere did not take place until 1905 in Birmingham Town Hall, eight years after Harris's death.

Siegfried was composing on this voyage, as well, working on his symphonic poem, Sehnsucht (Yearning).

*Clement was the son of a wealthy London shipbuilder, and their cruise was on the Wakefield, one of his father’s vessels. The two men were the only passengers, except for the captain and crew and various pets picked up along the way - canaries, a monkey and a Chinese dog. When Siegfried returned to Bayreuth, full of effusive praise for Clement, those close to Wagner referred to this voyage as “Siegfried’s honeymoon.” Several musicologists concur that in Harris, Siegfried found and lost the love if his life. Although Wagner married in 1915 when confronted with a likely outing of his homosexual proclivities, he continued to engage in sexual activity with men, particularly during visits to Berlin, where the anonymity of a big, permissive city reduced the risks to his reputation.

Harris was an admirer of Greek culture who had the fateful misfortune of confronting the outbreak of the 1897 Greco-Turkish war while traveling through Greece. Harris organized his own battalion of mercenaries to fight on the Greek side and was tragically killed in action at the Battle of the Five Wells at Pente Pigadia, Epirus, on April 23, 1897 – three months shy of his twenty-sixth birthday. Wounded early in the day, Harris refused to leave his post and died setting an example of gallantry that was not shared by his fellow officers and soldiers, many of whom deserted their position. He was subsequently buried in the graveyard of the Anglican Church of St. Paul's in Athens, although his family did not know of it. When Clement's communication with his brother Walter ceased, they harbored hope that perhaps Clement had been kidnapped, instead. There is a plaque at St. Paul's (Athens) that commemorates Clement Harris. In 1905 his parents made a memorial gift of a pipe organ in his honor at Withyham Church near Turnbridge Wells, forty miles SE of London. The organ is a two-manual instrument built by the esteemed J. W. Walker & Sons organ builders.

Clement's death was also commemorated by Stefan George in the poem “Pente Pigadia” found in his collection, Der Siebente Ring (The Seventh Ring). Stefan George (1868-1933), also homosexual, was an influential German poet, editor and translator.

Siegfried Wagner (right) composed the symphonic poem Glück (1923) as a memorial to Harris, and Wagner kept a photo of Harris on his desk for the rest of his life. In his 1923 autobiography, Wagner joyfully recalled his travels with "Clementchen" (a German term of endearment best translated as “dear little Clement”) and mentioned their sharing a bed like "Orestes and Pylades," a mythological gay couple. He recalled their travels to Singapore, where they found an idyllic spot for nude bathing like "two Adams."

Although he died before he could mature musically, the extant compositions of Clement Harris do not suggest a major talent, and Harris is known today primarily as the youthful lover of Siegfried Wagner. Nevertheless, Harris left a small body of compositions that include the aforementioned symphonic tone poem, piano pieces, art songs, and chamber works for violin, piano, clarinet and cello. His derivative musical style is indebted to Richard Wagner, Brahms and Schumann.

Clement’s diaries, which detailed his close friendship with Oscar Wilde, were published in German by Claus Victor Bock.


Siegfried Wagner: Glück (dedicated to the memory of Clement Harris)


For a brief sound sample of Harris’s tone poem Paradise Lost, click on this link:

https://play.google.com/store/music/album?id=Bkizqyxx5yrh3vfon7y3tji2s6u&tid=song-Tlsfi5ubyc2lnasx3rwiywwnbqa

A note from your blogger: I have wanted to publish this post for some time but have been frustrated that I can find no photographic image or portrait of Harris. If a reader is aware of one, please contact me at b2655@aol.com