JOURNALfor the STUDYof ANTISEMITISM

2011] ANTISEMITISM IN WAGNERIAN OPERA 249
characteristic also seen in the stumbling of Beckmesser as contrasted with
the graceful dancing of the townspeople in Meistersinger.
In Sander Gilman’s The Jew’s Body (1991), further significance is
given to the Jew’s feet. They became a source of disease, and the pace at
which Jews walked was perceived as a sign of their affliction. The seventeenth-century
Orientalist John Schudt commented that the crooked feet of
the Jews made them physically inferior and, ultimately, the general belief
about Jews’ feet influenced liberal efforts to include them in the modern
state. This is particularly true with military service, where it was believed
that Jews would be worthless as soldiers. In Austria, for example, weak feet
were said to be the main reason Jews inducted into the military were subsequently
detached.
Another example of a characteristic with hidden antisemitic meaning is
that of vocal patterns. Wagner’s formulation of a large-scale male and
female voice, for example, the “heroic tenor,” is used for the Volk, whereas
the outsiders sing in distinguishing non-Volkish ways. The gnomes in The
Ring have high and piercing voices, the same coded message for the confusion
between castration and circumcision found in Meistersinger, as well as
a related claim connecting circumcision with effeminacy in the Jewish
male. Thus, the Volk sing with heroic qualities while the outsider screams
in a high-pitched, effeminate voice.
Going beyond the visual and acoustic, Wagner employs the allegory of
smell to evoke images of character. Sulphurous fumes and the noxious
stenches that emanate from the outsider often accompany them. The central
theme of this coded idea is especially despicable because it is derived from
the belief of the “Jewish stench,” or “foetor Judaicus.” 8
The assertion that the Jew has a distinctive and unpleasant odor is a
particularly grave accusation, first because of the origin alleged to be the
stench’s cause, and second because of the several ways Jews were said to
act in order to eliminate it. Common belief during the Middle Ages associated
good spirits with emitting a pleasant fragrance while evil spirits, particularly
Satan and his minions, gave forth an obnoxious stench. For example,
when the coffin of St. Stephen, the protomartyr, was opened, his body was
said to have filled the air with a sweet fragrance that insinuated the odor of
sanctity. 9 In the case of the Jews, the stink was said to be a punishment for
8. For a survey of this degrading medieval superstition, see Jay Geller,
“(G)nos(e)ology: The Cultural Construction of the Other,” chap. 10 in People of
the Body, ed. Howard Eilberg Schwartz (Albany, NY: State University of New
York, 1992), 243-282.
9. See Stephen the Deacon, Protomartyr, in http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/
1226.shtml.