Dear and Honoured Friend,
It behoves me to turn to yourself, the most active and effectual founder and fosterer of a society for the furtherance of my intended Bühnenfestspiels, when it concerns a momentous step which can be more fitly taken by a proved and sagacious friend of my enterprise than by him who has to look upon that enterprise as his own. A powerful aid has become needful to us, if the work begun is to be carried to a speedy termination; whilst everything is bound up in that speedy execution, as it all depends on the retention of my personal bodily strength. In the course of two years we have been provided with as much as one hundred thousand thalers by the more immediate friends of my art: with this money we have laid the durable foundation of the whole undertaking, through erection of a Stage-festival-house whose structural solidity insures its service for any conceivable length of time. Only, at the very latest moment for giving definite orders for the construction of the stage-machinery and decorations, the forces of whilom aiders of the undertaking are quite exhausted; its progress is necessarily suspended, and itself accordingly falls victim to a sorry fate if no authoritative power shall intervene with help.
My agents here are of opinion that the undertaking should still be pursued at all hazards to the point of actual execution, as we may confidently rely on the costs being covered by the practical outcome of the interest displayed both far and wide in a quite unusual art-event. In this sense we are only in need of a sufficient guarantee, to secure us a loan in provision for uninterrupted continuance of what has been begun. In quest of such a guarantee I lately approached my exalted benefactor, the King of Bavaria; for reasons not clear to myself, His Majesty has decided adversely.
You know that we have lately been seeking such a guarantee among the richest of our willing friends. Yet even should this quarter furnish us assistance, presumably but temporary, for my part I am resolved to seek the rescue of such an important affair in the only place that can confer on it a corresponding dignity.
If I thus am thinking of the "Reich," you are not unaware how I hitherto have always shrunk from the idea of my undertaking and its fundamental culture-motive being discussed by the deputies to our Reichstag, as I should be unable to find a single one amongst them who could convincingly set forth and represent its proper meaning in face of the shameful disparagement of my project by our altogether ignorant Press of nowadays, both great and small. So: I have come by the thought of offering to our victorious Kaiser himself the first performances of my work, in lustral celebration of the glorious peace concluded with France in the year 1871. It therefore would be a question of placing the performance of my Nibelungen-work — effected amid circumstances so novel and peculiar to the German nature — in the same category as those theatric festivals which, pursuant to a not very laudable tradition, have hitherto been made to celebrate such high memorial days: I then should view the acceptance of my offer as alike the recognition of an idea of some moment to German culture. It would not beseem me to express myself, however, with persuasive force on such a point; I am absolutely bound to seek among the friends of my art, the well-wishers of my enterprise, for advocates who, guided by my circumstantial brief, can place the importance of my project in the requisite light at head-quarters.
In this, as in every other sense, it is a grand encouragement to me, to be able to select yourself, dear honoured friend, as first spokesman to your country's lord, the Grand Duke of Baden, whom I revere so highly. This pattern German Prince was the first to entertain me and my undertakings with truly luminous good-will in 1861, when I returned to Germany after years of exile. Since then, I have no reason to suspect a cooling of the magnanimous feelings which greeted me at that time, and therefore believe that you will meet a temper profoundly prepared and earnestly disposed in my favour, if you approach His Royal Highness in the name of all who already have lent their forces to my undertaking, among whom I have the special satisfaction of numbering my illustrious benefactor himself, to mediate a decisive aid on the path above outlined.
It cannot be my province to offer more precise suggestions as to the pursuit of this path, if it is resolved upon by the Grand Duke, as it would probably be natural that the co-operation of His Imperial and Royal Highness the Crown Prince of the German Empire might at once be contemplated by my illustrious benefactor as the most efficacious of all. I would merely permit myself to name their Highnesses the Grand Dukes of Saxe-Weimar and Mecklenburg and the Duke of Dessau, who have already evinced their personal interest in my undertaking, as presumably inclined to such co-operation.
To indicate precisely what I figure to myself as the crowning result of so powerful an intervention for my aims and wishes, I aspire to obtaining the Kaiser's command — as against the grant of one-hundred-thousand thalers, that is to say, the third part of the total costs of the undertaking — to institute three complete performances of my Bühnenfestspiel "Der Ring des Nibelungen" at a festival-theatre built at Bayreuth expressly for the purpose, in the summer of 1876 as the first lustral celebration of the peace concluded with France.
As it would be easy to arrive in plain figures at the number of seats to be secured by that sum, on the same scale as the rights of the present Patrons, in this communication to yourself I pass over all details of the business aspect of the matter, and beg you in union with our valued friends at Mannheim to take the first step towards the realisement of my floating idea, which I gladly restore to you as your own property.
With all esteem and friendship.
Yours faithfully,
Richard Wagner.
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner to Emil Heckel, with a Brief History of the Bayreuth Festivals, trans. William Ashton Ellis (Grant Richards, 1899), No. 46