[...] My dearest friend, you are beset on all sides by an association of personal interests which cannot be other than hostile to our productive union; and it takes in everyone from the very least to the very greatest. What is needed is the elaborate spy-glass of all-pervading love to penetrate this haze and make out your star’s true and genuine magnitude. I now stand outside, at a distance, and the people are with me: what I can see by dint of my magic they, too, suspect; but what clouds their vision fills me, who sees it clearly, with deep and painful discontent. An atmosphere whose atoms consist only of narrowness of outlook, foolishness, frivolity, superficiality, insincerity and disloyalty of the most miserable kind - who will ever penetrate it? Will the light of your star transcend it? Will the storm-clouds gather and clear the air with a terrible storm? How do you think I feel now, as I observe the course of present events! With what chilling frivolity is sport now being made with the fates of the noblest and greatest nation on earth: see how an ambitious Junker betrays his imbecile of a King in the most brazen manner, forcing him to play a dishonourable game which would appal the honest monarch if only he could see what was happening; and how, in order to save the nation and prevent any harm from befalling the brazen sinner whose fortunes are now being told by the great Gallic intriguer it is not the princes of this nation - the natural protectors of the people and the ones most directly affected by all that has happened - who have come together to consult with each other and reach a speedy agreement in order to take steps worthy of princes; no, it is the diplomats, “German diplomats” (what an absurdity!) who sit around, no longer able to tell the difference between what is honest and what is deceitful, since their sole concern is the game itself, a game which they assure their masters to be fearfully difficult and to require both skill and experience if others are to be allowed to join in - be it for profit or for loss! Even at best I see only half-heartedness, speciousness and inadequacy in place of all that is right and whole, and, as a consequence of that, I see boundless confusion setting in, of a kind that no prince will finally be able to combat but to which will be added mass chaos - the chaos of a brutal mass in need of help; and then - I see my “Germany” perish - for ever! To what avail shall my life have been then, to what avail my work and my creativity? To what avail the godlike love of my dear redeemer, who has rescued me and my works for the world? My artistic ideal stands and falls with Germany, just as my works will live or die with her. What will follow the downfall of the German princes is that Jewish-Germanic mass which I once described to you in my diary: you know what I mean by the word “German”. But — your diplomats cannot understand that. Ask any of them what he knows about the German character and what he thinks of it! - And I have to stand by while this happens, saying nothing - : for - what does an “opera composer” understand about politics! But now my heavenly friend is singled out and called upon to act, a prince whom Germany’s guardian spirit has fashioned and nurtured to lead our unique, well-preserved and great German fatherland, as though for his own deliverance! Alas! He still does not know that those who tore his dearest friend from his bosom wished only to frighten and humiliate him in order to bring home to him a sense of their own importance - their sad sense of self-importance which, if it were true, would be proof enough that Germany was already lost beyond hope. - But - I have fallen from the ship into the waves of a desert sea! What do I - poor and solitary as I am - want now: wind and storms obey God’s will; may He deign to govern the sea: I can do no more than seek to tend the light in my lighthouse. That shall I loyally do: and, as I hope, so may I hope to find the vessel whose fate fills us all with anxiety.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 348