Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of April 21, 1872

Overview

Their last morning in Tribschen is full of activity and sadness, intensified by the expectation of R.’s departure. He receives welcome news from Berlin about the takings there, while other letters and papers keep the day crowded with duties and reactions to attacks on the Wagner enterprise. The visit from Professor Nietzsche never happens, but Herr Am Rhyn says goodbye movingly, and Rubinstein’s sudden arrival from Kharkov adds another strange and touching scene to the evening.

Content

Sunday, April 21:

Wrote several letters, R. sketches out his speech for the foundation ceremony, which moves me to tears. Arrival of a very fine manifesto from the Academic Society.

Family lunch. We are expecting Professor Nietzsche, but he does not come. Herr Am Rhyn comes to say goodbye and is visibly moved. In Fritzsch’s paper there is a quotation from the Catholic Volksbote in which mud is flung at Hans’s concert for the Wagner Society and at the whole enterprise. One sees from which direction the wind is blowing! Nice letter from El. Kr[ockow] and Fr. Lenbach.

R. is greatly vexed because the royalties from Berlin do not come, a deliberate act of malice on the part of Herr von Hülsen, who is now particularly annoyed because the Emperor has allowed the Wagner Society the use of the opera house in Berlin.

In the evening Herr Josef Rubinstein suddenly arrives from Kharkov, a curious spectacle and experience; with him Dr. Cohen, his companion, who, concealed in the boathouse without the young man’s knowledge, wants to tell us that he needs to be treated with great consideration! R. is infinitely kind to the young man and advises him to take things easy, offering him access to Bayreuth.