Cosima's Diaries

Recordings by Cosima Wagner between 1869 and 1883

Cosima Wagner kept her diaries from 1 January 1869 at Tribschen until the night before Wagner’s death in Venice on 13 February 1883. She wrote them for her children, so that Siegfried would one day know his father “truly,” and she wrote nearly every day: Wagner’s talk, his dreams, the evening readings, the music, the visitors, debts and quarrels. No other source lets us hear him thinking aloud for so long. The diaries follow the Tribschen idyll, the building of the Bayreuth festival theatre and the composition of Parsifal.

The entries are arranged by year and month and each can be opened on its own page. The sections below trace the main lines of the diaries.

Cosima Wagner began her diaries at Tribschen on 1 January 1869 and kept them until the night before Wagner’s death in Venice on 13 February 1883. She wrote them for her children, and above all for Siegfried, so that he would one day know his father “truly,” and she wrote nearly every day: what Wagner said at breakfast, his dreams, the evening readings of Shakespeare, Calderón and Goethe, the music played at the piano, the visitors, illnesses, debts and quarrels. No other source lets us hear Wagner thinking aloud for so long, or shows so clearly how his ideas moved in his last fourteen years. At Tribschen the household lives in a private idyll, sealed by the birth of a son and by marriage, with the Ring resumed and Nietzsche a frequent guest. From 1872 everything turns to Bayreuth and the building of a festival theatre, achieved through years of fundraising and near collapse. After the 1876 Ring the diaries draw inward to Parsifal, written at Wahnfried and finished on long Italian journeys, while Wagner’s talk reaches toward a religion of compassion drawn from Schopenhauer, Buddhism and the Gospels. The same pages record, often and plainly, the antisemitism of both Wagner and Cosima.

Tribschen. The first pages are a confession. Cosima, who had left Hans von Bülow for Wagner, calls her love “a rebirth, a deliverance,” and writes under a constant sense of guilt toward her husband that she never lost. The years at Tribschen bring the birth of Siegfried in June 1869, her divorce and her marriage to Wagner in the Protestant church at Lucerne on 25 August 1870, the Franco-Prussian War, the essay Beethoven and the completion of Siegfried. On her birthday that Christmas she woke to the Siegfried Idyll played on the staircase. Nietzsche first called on 17 May 1869 and became almost one of the family; his manuscript on the birth of tragedy arrived as a Christmas gift in 1870. Wagner’s remarks already circle the themes of his last years. Music, he said in November 1869, “is the direct product of Christianity, as is the saint,” and the next spring he described the Knight of the Grail as free because “he acts, not in his own behalf, but for others.” If anyone asked whether there was a God, he said in 1870, he would answer that at a moment when thousands are singing to him, “God is alive, he is there.”

Founding Bayreuth. In April 1871 the Wagners first saw Bayreuth; its baroque opera house “will not do for us at all; so we must build.” The foundation stone was laid in the rain on 22 May 1872, Wagner’s birthday, followed by the Ninth Symphony in the old opera house. The next four years are full of patrons, Wagner societies, singers, architects, concert tours and money. A royal loan in 1874 rescued the enterprise, and the family moved into Wahnfried that April. On 21 November 1874 Wagner finished the score of Götterdämmerung, a day Cosima remembered with tears, because he was hurt to find her reading a letter from her father at that moment. In between, Cosima converted to Protestantism on 31 October 1872 and took Communion with Wagner: “I felt as if our bond had only now been truly sealed.”

The first festival. The Ring was given complete for the first time in August 1876, before the German Emperor and much of musical Europe. The diaries record the mishaps as well as the triumph, and the exhaustion afterwards: looking back that November, Wagner said his main feeling during the performances had been “Never again, never again!” The festival left a large deficit, and the autumn in Italy brought two meetings that would shape the coming years: the last time the Wagners spent with Nietzsche, at Sorrento, and the first meeting with Count Arthur de Gobineau in Rome on 30 November.

The Parsifal years. Wagner began Parsifal in earnest in 1877 and finished the prose draft on 28 February (“The Redeemer unchained!” Cosima wrote) and the poem on 19 April. Composing the Communion scene that August, he told her that “this scene of Holy Communion will be the main scene, the core of the whole work.” The music grew slowly through 1878 and 1879 beside the founding of the Bayreuther Blätter, the regenerative essays and campaigns against vivisection, and the widening break with Nietzsche. In 1880 the family moved to Naples, where Paul von Joukowsky joined them as stage designer and the garden at Ravello suggested Klingsor’s magic garden; in Siena that August the cathedral moved Wagner to tears and became a model for the Temple of the Grail. That November he conducted the Prelude privately for King Ludwig in Munich. Gobineau stayed at Wahnfried in 1881, and Wagner read his books on race and on the Persians with growing enthusiasm. The score was finished in Palermo on 13 January 1882. “With this, as with all his other works,” Cosima wrote, “he had feared being interrupted by death.”

The premiere and Venice. Sixteen performances of Parsifal followed in July and August 1882, conducted by Hermann Levi. Wagner asked that the audience not call the singers out after the second act, rebuked a chorister for joking about the bread, and at the last performance took the baton himself for the end of the third act. The family then settled in the Palazzo Vendramin in Venice. The last months bring the news of Gobineau’s death, Liszt’s long visit, Hans von Bülow’s breakdown, and on Christmas Eve a performance at La Fenice of the symphony Wagner had written at nineteen, played as a birthday present to Cosima. He was weakened by repeated heart spasms, and he was still talking about writing symphonies and an essay on the feminine. The last entry, on 12 February 1883, ends with him at the piano playing the Rhinedaughters’ lament: “Extraordinary that I saw this so clearly at that time!”

Spirituality. The diaries are themselves partly a religious document. Cosima wrote under a sense of “unatonable guilt” toward Bülow and turned it into a discipline of renunciation. After her conversion she took Communion regularly, writing in 1873 that “the only true communion with people is before the altar,” and she read Meister Eckhart, Tauler, the Theologia Germanica and the Imitation of Christ (“Non sum! How dearly I should like to make that my motto!”). Her devotion to Wagner took the same form, and she wrote that in him she found “not my happiness, but my salvation.”

Wagner’s own faith was heterodox and he said so. Its foundation was Schopenhauer: “it was Schopenhauer who revealed Christianity to me,” he told Cosima in 1879. Through Schopenhauer came Buddhism and the Vedanta, which run through the diaries from first to last: the Buddhist drama Die Sieger, often planned and never written; the Brahmin saying “tat tvam asi,” which he spoke to Cosima at Christmas 1874; readings of the Bhagavad-Gita, the Upanishads and, in Venice, a new life of the Buddha. He set the two traditions side by side rather than choosing between them. Brahmanism was “the religion of intelligence,” but Christianity stood above it as “the religion of suffering.” Buddhism was “a flowering of the human spirit” with no church and no compulsion, and by studying the Buddha, he said in 1882, “one learns to understand Christianity.” Cosima put the difference in a sentence of her own: “Buddha does not move one, he teaches; Christ teaches by moving.”

At the centre stood Christ, kept apart from the church. “I do not believe in God, but in godliness, which is revealed in a Jesus without sin,” Wagner said in 1879, and he repeatedly complained that people “think only of the church and confuse this with Christianity.” In his last years he said that he recognized “no religion except compassion,” extended to animals as well as people, and this lay behind his vegetarian leanings and his fury at vivisection. Art was to carry what the churches had lost. “Art makes religions eternal,” he said in 1872; music was “the only possible church nowadays”; and in 1879 he gave the core of Religion and Art in a sentence, that religion should “influence ethics, and allow faith to be represented by art, which can transform illusion into truth.” “The path from religion to art bad, from art to religion good,” he noted in 1880.

Parsifal was where these ideas met, and the diaries show how carefully he guarded its tone. He called it “his most propitiatory work” and spoke of it as the dream vision of a rite, not the rite itself. He kept Christ off the stage on principle: “One cannot paint Christ, but one can portray him in music,” and to have Christ sung by a tenor was “a disgusting idea.” What he hoped for from his audience was less instruction than inward change, a recognition of suffering that leads to compassion and resignation. In December 1882 he said he would never again try to explain his ideas on the blood of Christ: “these are things one all of a sudden grasps.” Six weeks later, talking of Nature’s cruelty, he said it went on “until the appearance of the Saviour on the cross,” and added, “in the urge to put an end to the whole of Nature’s will to live.”

Nietzsche. The diaries hold the whole arc of the friendship. Nietzsche arrives in 1869 as a brilliant young professor who “knows R.’s works thoroughly,” spends holidays at Tribschen, writes The Birth of Tragedy under Wagner’s spell and stands beside him at the foundation stone. Cosima noticed early “a dubious streak” in him. The last meetings were at Sorrento in 1876. When Human, All Too Human arrived in April 1878, Wagner resolved not to read it, and by 1879 Cosima wrote that Nietzsche had “committed the one sin which cannot be atoned for, the sin against the Holy Ghost.” In later years Wagner spoke of him with contempt and some sorrow, as a promising mind that the modern world had ruined, while Cosima admitted that she could still remember only his friendly side.

Antisemitism. Hostile remarks about Jews by both Wagner and Cosima recur from the first year to the last, aimed at the press, critics, money, Meyerbeer and the modern theatre. In 1873 Wagner opposed intermarriage in racial terms, and the remarks grow harsher from 1879, when the antisemitic movement gathered in Berlin. That October, reading a speech by Adolf Stoecker, he was “in favor of expelling them entirely.” In December 1881, after the Ringtheater fire in Vienna, Cosima records him making “a drastic joke to the effect that all Jews should be burned at a performance of Nathan der Weise.” From 1881 Gobineau’s racial theories enter the conversation, though Wagner usually set Christianity against them; in June 1881 he was “downright explosive in favor of Christian theories in contrast to racial ones,” and that December he said that races were “done for, and all that can now make an impact is, as I have ventured to express it, the blood of Christ.” He also refused to sign the 1880 petition to Bismarck against the Jews, declined to let the Bayreuther Blätter join the agitation, and complained that nobody had noticed what Know Thyself said about “our own blame for our situation.”

The same diaries show Wagner depending on Jewish colleagues, above all Joseph Rubinstein, Angelo Neumann and Hermann Levi, and they show how that dependence was poisoned. In 1880 Wagner said he could not let Levi conduct Parsifal “unbaptized,” and in 1881 he told him he hoped to find “a formula which will make you feel completely one of us.” When an anonymous letter that summer made Levi ask to be released, Wagner wrote persuading him to return, and Levi conducted every performance in 1882 and was with the family in Venice in February 1883. One of the last entries records Wagner saying that “the Jews, the good ones,” were “condemned to a gently resigned asceticism.”

Because the diaries run to thousands of entries, the table below is a finding aid rather than a summary. Choose a year and month to browse, or search the entries, then open a day to read it in full.

Year

Month

1869• 1870• 1871• 1872• 1873• 1874• 1875• 1876• 1877• 1878• 1879• 1880• 1881• 1882• 1883

Jan• Feb• Mar• Apr• May• Jun• Jul• Aug• Sep• Oct• Nov• Dec

Showing entries for May 1872 (30 total)

Date	Word Count	Subject
May 1, 1872	369	After a rough night disturbed by Rus, R. rises early to show the children the park and delights in its birds and animals. The day combines domestic contentment with serious theater-business talk, including the architect, musicians, copyright hopes, and hostility from J. J. Weber. By evening, despite the practical disputes, the household feels peaceful and happy, with music, visitors, and the piano now in place.
May 2, 1872	347	R. wakes in good spirits and begins the day with a walk in the park, followed by letters and family time. She accompanies the children into Bayreuth, visits friends, inspects their site and rented house, and is deeply moved by the opera house’s restored grandeur. The conversation at home turns to donors, disappointments, and betrayals, but the atmosphere remains intimate and full of shared reflection.
May 3, 1872	155	Business correspondence and orchestral concerns fill the morning, and she and R. spend much of the day talking about the 9th Symphony’s difficulty and Beethoven’s technical genius. Their discussion expands into broader complaints about German professors and the moral decay of the nation’s culture. After lunch they take a lovely walk through the countryside, and the day closes calmly with the children in the park and a quiet evening on the balcony.
May 4, 1872	209	R. had a poor night as the weather shifted, and the day brought news from Herr Wilhelmj that he would arrive on the 9th. The household read alarming reports from Naples and Vesuvius, while R. argued sharply against a mild explanation of earthquakes and reflected bitterly on the Jesuits, German hatred in Bohemia, and the seductive but brutal veneer of Latin culture. After praising the park and air around them as distinctly German, they went into town, where R. held a conference, the first purchases for Bayreuth were made, and 535 florins arrived from the agents, marking an encouraging beginning.
May 5, 1872	116	They packed up and left early with Kathchen, while the children's restrained farewells worried R. despite the earlier instruction not to cry. The train journey was mostly smooth until a long wait in Schwandorf, made worse by the silent stares of bystanders, and R. spent the delay drafting plans for the ceremony on the 22nd. In the meantime they listened to talk of Berlioz and Schumann, with R. contrasting Schumann's inwardness with Berlioz's powerful but only partly deep impressions from the world.
May 6, 1872	89	In Linz, R. was pleased by good coffee and by the landscape near Vienna, which reminded him of Beethoven and even of passages from the sonatas. They arrived at ten to find many Wagner supporters waiting, had reassuring news about Kafka, and settled in comfortably with the Standhartners. After lunch Herbeck pressed them to attend a Wagner performance, something that remained unfamiliar to R., and the evening ended with a walk through the Volksgarten and an early night.
May 7, 1872	141	R. slept well, and the two of them enjoyed shopping and the rare pleasure of being together in Vienna. The day included a visit from Countess Donhoff, whom the diarist admired as unusually charming among Wagnerians, and an evening ramble through the city. R. was irritated by workers hammering in St. Stephen's during Mass, and later he sparred with Dr. Kafka over the press, insisting that its malice could still drag the seriousness of the cause through the mud.
May 8, 1872	171	The first letter from the children reported that they were well, which brought relief. At rehearsal, the players were thrilled to perform under R., and he allowed Conservatoire students to attend, drawing much cheering before withdrawing to rest. The day also brought social chatter about Hans, Rubinstein, the hostility of his wife to Wagner's music, and the aristocracy's passivity toward Bayreuth, while Herbeck tried to defend himself over the Meistersinger affair and R. later played to a brilliant audience despite poor execution.
May 9, 1872	144	After a stop at the photographer's, R. and the diarist visited Makart and admired his large Caterina Cornaro, though they still felt he depended too much on pictures rather than living impressions. She again bristled at newspaper gossip about her life with R. and the false claim that they had appeared together in the foyer, all of which sharpened her dislike of the press. The birthday lunch was followed by an outing to Dornbach and an evening gathering at Dr. Nettke's with patrons, Wagner Society members, Lenbach, and Makart, where Bayreuth was toasted and R. answered by placing his trust in the German spirit.
May 10, 1872	161	She began the day with a headache and letters from the children, then went with Lenbach to the Belvedere to see splendid Titian paintings. At rehearsal R. was dissatisfied, complaining that the orchestra had declined over the years and criticizing its lazy applause, while also noting the strange spectacle of admirers crowding around him. Among those present were Frl. Gallmeyer, several nobles, and Dr. Standhartner, who brought word that Prague was considering a Wagner Society with Czech and Bohemian representation, a proposal that seemed to R. to confirm the unifying power of Wagnerian art.
May 11, 1872	86	The final rehearsal focused heavily on the Eroica, and R. insisted on calm by forbidding ovations. The household welcomed Count and Countess Krockow, and at lunch R. spoke movingly about their relationship and the hardships that led to it, calling her his royal wife. Later they drove first to see a splendid Rembrandt at Count Lanckoronski's and then to the Prater, before an evening visit from Count Donhoff, his wife, Lenbach, and other Wagnerians.
May 12, 1872	214	The day opened with deputations from the Academic Choral Society and the Conservatoire bringing laurel wreaths and silver plate, and R. responded with speeches that placed his hopes in youth. At the concert, the hall was packed and the reception overwhelming, with laurel leaves everywhere and a thunderstorm during the Magic Fire Music that R. took as an auspicious sign. He said this would be the last concert he conducted, since he disliked giving fragments of his works, though he would gladly conduct Beethoven again, and the day closed with visits from Richter and then Countess Donhoff, before exhaustion sent them home early.
May 13, 1872	81	Packing continued while R. dealt with the musicians and she visited the Albertina, where she saw outstanding works, including Raphael drawings linked to Durer. At parting, Countess Donhoff talked excitedly about Rubinstein's anger over Wagner and the way Wagner had captivated Vienna, especially its women. After warm farewells from their hosts, they left at five with Richter, but the night was sleepless.
May 14, 1872	82	They arrived in Bayreuth to a warm welcome from the mayor before continuing to the Fantaisie, where the children were overjoyed to reunite with everyone and receive their gifts. The household spent the rest of the day unpacking and settling in, though the work left them exhausted. R. was pleased by the children and the quiet of the place, and the fine weather seemed to follow him.
May 15, 1872	171	R. slept well, but the day was shadowed by discouraging news about musicians withdrawing from the festival and by the general difficulty of getting things organized from a distance. The writer takes comfort in the beauty of the surroundings, even while noting R.'s vexation with all the petty complications and self-important people involved. Amid the frustration, R. reflects tenderly on family life and the long future that may lie ahead for the children.
May 16, 1872	138	A very early start brought more domestic disorder, with workmen arriving before dawn and the landlords proving unreliable and muddled. Even so, the family enjoyed a cheerful outing, and the new rooms gradually came together with pictures hung and furniture in place. The setting is becoming increasingly pleasing, though worry persists over musicians who have withdrawn and the possibility of further interference with R.'s work.
May 17, 1872	104	R. had another miserable night and wrestled with how to deliver his speeches, finally deciding to write them out rather than improvise or perform like an actor. The day also included social calls, birthday shopping, and a visit to the festival site, which left a strong impression on the family. Despite the practical annoyances, there is growing satisfaction in the feeling of belonging to this new home.
May 18, 1872	61	The afternoon brought an influx of distinguished visitors, including Nietzsche, Gersdorff, and the Ritters, along with several other friends and musicians already in town. The atmosphere was lively and companionable, with a sense that everyone present belonged to the same artistic world. R. also sent a gracious invitation to the writer's father, further widening the circle around the festival.
May 19, 1872	56	Whitsunday was crowded with calls and arrivals, while laurel arrangements, visitors, and a shortage of carriages kept everything in motion. The day mixed charm with inconvenience, as pleasant guests alternated with less welcome ones and rain complicated the logistics. Even so, the mood remained spirited and full of festival expectation.
May 20, 1872	131	The first rehearsal was deeply moving, with R. greeting the musicians solemnly and the day feeling like a gathering of many German regions around art. The writers note both the excitement and the need for much more work, especially since the performers still lacked a full sense of interpretation. By evening, after more rehearsal and many visits from friends including Malwida Meysenbug, R. was tired but elated by the success.
May 21, 1872	243	The morning rehearsal was full of emotion and culminated in what felt like a triumph, with even longtime acquaintances recognizing the power of the occasion. The music made a strong impression on everyone, and the gathering seemed to unite people from many backgrounds in a shared artistic faith. Later, a procession of singers and townspeople came to honor R., and he answered them briefly despite being hoarse, which only deepened the sense of communal uplift.
May 22, 1872	458	R.'s birthday was marked by rain, but the day moved forward with gifts from the children, a visit to lay the foundation stone, and the formal speeches in the opera house. The writer had a difficult confrontation with Julius Lang and felt both pride and strain as the celebrations unfolded under pressure. The later performance of the Ninth Symphony and the banquet gave the occasion grandeur, even though tensions with certain guests darkened the evening.
May 23, 1872	360	The next morning began with more dreams about quarrels and troubling rooms, but the practical business of the festival soon took over, including the unanimous decision to build the theater. The writer remained firm about social matters, insisting on reunion with Wagner rather than meeting separately, while saying farewell to many friends and welcoming a final round of guests. A tense episode involving journalists and their critics stirred indignation, yet the overall memory of the celebration remained intact and joyful.
May 24, 1872	482	A heartfelt letter from a working man asks the couple to stand as godparents to his newborn, and they accept gladly. The day is crowded with visitors, including an English journalist who compares Bayreuth favorably to Düsseldorf, and Malwida remains with them through the evening. There is also serious business: Brandt proves himself capable in conference, and the atmosphere is mixed with irritation over the publication of the King's telegram and with tense talk about hostile voices around Wagner. The day ends with the arrival of four young singers who come to introduce themselves, leaving the household feeling as if the whole succession of people and events had passed like a beautiful dream.
May 26, 1872	126	R. sleeps a little better, and reports from Betz and an American correspondent bring a measure of calm and international interest. Malwida joins them at lunch, and their walk through the Salamander valley gives a strong sense of being rooted in Germany. In the evening they read Rohde on Nietzsche, though the article seems too difficult and inward for ordinary readers. News that Bismarck is following the enterprise with national concern pleases them, while a letter from Vreneli reminds them that life at Tribschen remains quiet enough for foxes to steal chickens.
May 27, 1872	98	R. is badly exhausted after a short night, but he still works out plans to keep his singers free from fixed contracts and to build a more flexible musical future. A walk in beautiful country and a visit with the Hummelbauer children lift the spirits for a while. The mood sours when a letter from Hans reproaches the speaker for taking the children on stage, leaving a painful impression. The day closes with a visit to Malwida Meysenbug, one of the few consoling social moments.
May 28, 1872	234	The work with the children resumes, and correspondence about practical matters occupies much of the morning. A tenor named Diener is heard and engaged, though he shows the same shallow vocal habits that frustrate them in modern singers. The conversation turns to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which they treat as a mysterious and difficult work that may not belong before an undisciplined audience. After a pleasant outing to the Sophienberg with Malwida, the evening brings the pleasure of reading 'Nicht kapitulieren' aloud to great delight.
May 29, 1872	62	R. remains sleepless and drained, and even ordinary tasks feel heavy to him. The architect Wolffel comes to discuss the house, while Malwida walks without R. because he is too worn out to join her. Fine letters from Professor N. offer warmth and understanding amid the strain. The day is quiet, but the fatigue hanging over the household is unmistakable.
May 30, 1872	87	After another miserable night, R. finally writes to the King and asks for patience as the only reward for his persistence. In the afternoon they walk into town, where the churchyard prompts R. to speak calmly about his own death and with aching tenderness about the fear of losing his companion too soon. The reflection is intimate and solemn rather than despairing, shaped by exhaustion and affection. By evening they are both too tired for anything but an early bed.
May 31, 1872	261	For the first time in days, R. sleeps well, and the relief is immediate and deep. He spends the morning with the children and letters, while news from the mayor confirms how warmly the festival's success is being received. A malicious newspaper notice about Weissheimer and Bayreuth angers her, especially because it distorts old tensions and political maneuvering for public effect. The evening turns quieter again as they read Keller's legends, though the tone of those stories leaves her uneasy.
No diary entries found.