Isolde Wagner

Isolde Josefa Ludovika Beidler (née von Bülow; 10 April 1865 – 7 February 1919) was the first child of the composer Richard Wagner and his wife, who is generally known as Cosima Wagner (though the two of them married only in 1870).

Isolde herself married the Swiss-born conductor (1872–1930) and was the mother of author (1901–1981), celebrated at his birth as "Richard Wagner's first grandchild".

Biography

First years Isolde Josefa Ludovika von Bülow was born in Munich slightly more than nine months after her parents Richard Wagner and Cosima Liszt had spent an amorous week alone together in a house on the shores of Lake Starnberg, south of Munich and north of Garmisch. Both her parents were music celebrities: the child's illegitimacy risked scandal, leading to professional, social and financial difficulties. Cosima's husband Hans von Bülow, who was hugely in awe of Wagner's musical talent, acknowledged the baby as his own, and she started out in life as Isolde von Bülow. (Hans von Bülow is reported as having stated that "if it had been anybody but Wagner, I would have shot him".)

According to at least one source Isolde was, during her childhood, her mother's favourite daughter. As she grew to womanhood she was nevertheless capable of treating her many admirers with waspishness. She would address the fervent 'Wagnerite' Houston Stewart Chamberlain (who was, in fairness, married to someone else when he started showing an interest in Isolde) simply as "Glotzauge" (Goggle-eyes). Chamberlain later joined the family, marrying Isolde's sister Eva: in the dynastic wranglings that were a feature of Wagner family life during the early decades of the twentieth century, he was one of those who led the faction that sought to isolate Isolde from the others.

Marriage

On 20 December 1900, now aged 35, Isolde married 28-year-old Swiss conductor . Beidler had arrived in Bayreuth in 1896 to take a post as an assistant musical director at the Festspielhaus, and like his new wife was, according to sources, capable of singular tactlessness. The couple settled (as tenants) at near Bayreuth, where Beidler set up a private aviary of more than 100 exotic birds that he had collected in Russia. Wagner's widow, Cosima, was not impressed. The couple's ambitious lifestyle was not matched by Beidler's earnings as a young conductor working in Bayreuth and Moscow. However, under the adept management of Cosima Wagner, the estate that the family had inherited from Richard Wagner had become fabulously wealthy, and Isolde continued to receive a financial allowance from her mother, which was becoming one of several factors giving rise to inter-generational tensions.

Franz Beidler embarked on an affair with a young singer called Emmy Zimmermann in 1910. This had various consequences, including the birth, on 22 May 1912, of a baby whom they called Senta Eva Elisabeth. A separation between Isolde and her husband had been on her mother's agenda since at least as far back as 1906, but Isolde resolutely stood by Franz "because he is my husband and I have a child from him", as she wrote to her half-sister Daniela. The case of opened on 6 March 1914 and ended on 19 June that year, when the court dismissed the plaintiff. Sources suggest that it would have been remarkable for a Bavarian court to find against the powerful Wagner clan.

Death The lung damage that doctors had diagnosed as tuberculosis was never cured, and Isolde Beidler sickened further in Munich. She received treatment at a nursing home in Partenkirchen where, ominously, the disease was diagnosed in both lungs. Patient notes from the Partenkirchen clinic strongly indicate that Beidler was most uncooperative in her treatment. When instructed by the doctor to lie down for long periods, she insisted on "doing something very rash such as taking long excursions in bad weather, drinking excessive amounts of alcohol etc". It was perhaps reflective of the extent to which knowledge of the Wagner family feud had become public property that the notes mentioned also that the patient's "exceedingly disagreeable domestic arrangements... [were] ... having a highly disruptive effect on the whole course of her treatment ... often producing the most severe agitation". Rather than remain in the sanatorium until her cure had its effect, she periodically discharged herself and returned to Munich. Later she moved for a few months to Davos, before moving on again to stay with Daniela on the shores of Lake Garda and then, finally, taking herself back to Munich in June 1918 when she sensed that the end was drawing near.

Isolde Beidler died in her apartment at mid-afternoon on 7 February 1919 at the end of a lengthy period of intensely painful illness. Her family was represented at her burial three days later only by her husband, her son, and her half-sister. Her mother was told of her death, in response to a casual enquiry, only in 1929.