Winifred Wagner: A Life at the Heart of Hitler's Bayreuth

About this book

Winifred Wagner was a British-born orphan who became Richard Wagners daughter-in-law head of the Bayreuth festival and one of Adolf Hitlers closest personal friends. A no-nonsense Englishwoman who displaced Wagners formidable widow to become head of the family and the Festival Winifred fell adolescently in love with Hitler and made Bayreuth the summer gathering place for the Nazi elite from 1933 to 1939. And yet this staunch German nationalist leaped to the aid of Jewish acquaintances and artists as they were increasingly threatened by exile imprisonment or death. Drawing on previously unavailable sources Brigitte Hamann has produced a meticulously researched and elegantly written biographythe story of the private Hitler and his monumental obsessions and of the headstrong dedicated and misguided woman who remained loyal to his memory until her death in 1980.