Category: Cosima Wagner Diaries

Feustel's birthday. R. feels a little better but does not attend due to considerable fatigue; I bring the well-wishes and gifts with Eva and Fidi. Friedrich Feustel (Januar 21, 1824 – Oktober 12, 1891) Banker, politician, entrepreneur, enabler of the Bayreuth enterprise. Foehn air, which has a very bad effect…

R. wakes from a dreadful dream; I had once again left him after a quarrel and refused to return home, there was no place for me there, and in a hotel, he met me with my mother and wished to take me back home. My face and body were covered…

R. is unwell and must have leeches applied. The clumsy surgeon burns him with creosote, and he has a terrible day. Since he has not gone out for several days, he feels dejected, but the children cheer him up with their singing, and he himself joins in, singing the hymn…

R. is plagued by his cold and is beginning to have a tooth abscess. Visits, letters, reading Gfrörer in the evenings.  Decision to remove Schopenhauer from the wall "because he does not fit in with Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven; the philosopher must be solitary, he must translate into calm reflection everything…

Lusch chosen by our servant as godmother. Very bad weather. Visits. In the evening the F minor sonata, which R. performs with Rubinstein. Much to discuss with him. A Mr Hofmann asks about a tour with “Die Walküre” on the piano! …  Letter from Councilor Düfflipp, saying that the king…

Schopenhauer is now to be hung; R. told me on an earlier occasion that his late friend Hermann Franck[1] had said to him: "Either Germany will become something, or it will not; but if it does, the philosophy of Schopenhauer will be taught in the universities." More and more trickery…