Opera on the Move in the Nordic Countries during the Long 19th ...

232 Jens Hesselager
so to speak. This, by implication, is also a question pertaining to some of the
mechanisms of anti-Semitism in Christian society in the nineteenth century.
Another issue has to do with the ways in which music and the musical
voice may have been part of the symbolic representation of Jewish cultural
identity.
As is well known, Richard Wagner dealt with both of these questions in
his essay Das Judenthum in der Musik, first published in Neue Zeitschrift
für Musik in 1850 as a reaction to a discussion in the journal of the phenomenon
of a possible “hebräischer Kunstgeschmack”. While Wagner’s essay
may not be a relevant document to consult if we want to know about
the specific relationship between Jewish and Christian culture in Denmark
around ten years earlier, it may nevertheless serve to illustrate clearly two
arguments that are relevant to the Danish context, as I will seek to demonstrate.
The premise of Wagner’s discussion was that Jews and Jewish
culture in contemporary European society – at least progressive, reformorientated
members of that culture – while largely ghettoized, increasingly
sought to be integrated and indeed assimilated into the national cultures
around them. Considering the intellectual legacy of Jewish enlightenment
philosophers such as Moses Mendelssohn and also the contemporary Jewish
reform movements, this is a fairly unproblematic premise. 17
The same premise is also central to the first novel of the Danish author,
Meïr Aron Goldschmidt, En Jøde (1845). Goldschmidt, however, viewed
the issue from the standpoint of the young, ambitious, “modern” protagonist,
Jacob, who strives to be accepted on an equal basis amongst his fellow
Danes, meanwhile frowning on the backward ways of his own Jewish
culture. What Wagner describes as “our” problematic blend of an idealistic
support of the “emancipation” of the Jews in principle on the one hand and
an instinctive disgust and reluctance to accept Jews when actually confronted
with them in daily life on the other is very similar to Goldschmidt’s
descriptions of the attitude Jacob encounters among his fellow Danes, not
least in the seemingly well-meaning family of his fiancée, the daughter of a
Danish Protestant pastor.
More controversially, of course, Wagner set out not only to explain and
analyse this situation, but also to rationalise and legitimise “our” instinctive
reluctance (disgust) to accept the Jews. He ends his essay with rather disheartening
friendly advice to the Jews: “Gemeinschaftlich mit uns Mensch
werden, heißt für den Juden aber zu allernächst so viel als: aufhören, Jude
zu sein.” (Wagner 1850/1869, 32) For some reason Wagner chose to single
17 Cf. Botstein 1991.