[...] On the other hand I am directing my attention more and more to Nuremberg. Curiously enough I also have a long and enthusiastic letter about Nuremberg to-day from Frantz, suggesting that I should consider it. It is remarkably significant that this very genuine and unique "German" art centre, Protestant Nuremberg, should have come to the Bavarian Crown and consequently into the domain of my ardently Catholic royal friend. It is there that the future "German Academy" belongs, and so do all those other things which can never flourish in the superannuated un-German capital of our little Louis Quatorze. There is the place for the spirit of a united Germany to flourish. There, too, is the place for our school, around which there must ultimately grow up a general School of Art and Science, German and non-Jewish. I should like the King to give me a lodge of the castle of Bayreuth for my retreat—Nuremberg near by—all Germany about me.—
Only for heaven's sake don't let a word of this get abroad. Even the King would not understand it in the least as yet. To him—and for the matter of that, to the world as well—I must convey the idea empirically, and little by little. "Hans Sachs" belongs to Nuremberg—yes, then for the present not another word. The rest—will make itself understood. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 614