JOURNALfor the STUDYof ANTISEMITISM

2011] ANTISEMITISM IN WAGNERIAN OPERA 245
having an excitable nature, is a traditional antisemitic stereotype. How
shocked Wagner must have been to see himself in Adorno’s description of
the prototypical subhuman.
MEISTERSINGER
The opera, which takes place in medieval Nuremberg, tells of that
city’s guild of singer/poets. 4 Entry into the guild was based on the applicant’s
singing and his ability to craft the poetry on which his song would be
based. Rules of text and song were strict, with little toleration for any deviation
from orthodoxy.
Wagner’s opera was an autobiographical roman à clef in which the
genius-hero, Walther—Wagner’s depiction of himself—breaks the rules of
song construction but creates masterpieces. The villain, Sixtus Beckmesser,
represents Wagner’s archenemy, the forces that insist on adherence to doctrine.
Beckmesser, who is not a Jew and who could not have been a member
of the guild if he were, is an accumulation of nineteenth-century antisemitic
clichés, the personification of every unsavory aspect about Jews espoused
by Wagner.
Specifically, Wagner believed that Jews shuffle and stagger, their eyes
squint, they are belligerent, designing, and unscrupulous—all characteristics
that Beckmesser displays in the course of the opera. Furthermore, and
most important to the character of Beckmesser, is his absolute deficiency of
musical talent, his inability to craft poetry, and his lack of metric or rhythmic
sensitivity, any one of which should have made him unfit to be a member
of the guild.
4. Between the 14th and 16th centuries, Mastersingers generally belonged to
the artisan and trading classes of German towns. The earliest Mastersinger school
was in Mainz. Others were established in Strasbourg, Frankfurt, Wurzburg, Zurich,
Prague, and Nuremberg, the latter under the leadership of Hans Sachs, who is a
central figure in Wagner’s opera. The Nuremberg Mastersinger school became the
most famous school in the 16th century, by which time such schools had spread all
over Germany to include Magdeburg, Breslau, Görlitz, and Danzig. Each guild had
various classes of members, ranging from beginner to Meister, who were poets
skilled in writing new melodies as well as new verses to already composed melodies.
The singing was done without accompaniment and with rules of the art set
down in the lawbook of the guild. Meetings took place either in the town hall or,
more frequently, in the town church. Three times a year, at Easter, Pentecost, and
Christmas, special festivals and singing competitions were instituted. At such
events, judges, called “Markers,” were appointed to criticize the competitors and
note their offenses against the rules. In Meistersinger, this is the role of Sixtus
Beckmesser.