Should the square in front of the opera house be renamed? There is a heated debate about this in Nuremberg. There is no question that the composer was an anti-Semite. The cultural scene is divided as to whether his memory must therefore be erased.
The Richard Wagner Festival begins this Tuesday and in the SZ the festival director Katharina Wagner asked for forgiveness in advance: “There is no scandal, that is the disappointment of this year.” Compared to other years, you can say that. There is certainly a debate about Wagner and Richard. It’s just not taking place in Bayreuth, but an hour’s slow train ride across Franconia, in Nuremberg. Left-wing activists there recently called for Richard-Wagner-Platz to be renamed. If they had their way, the aesthetically manageable piazza in front of Nuremberg’s state theater should no longer be named after the “confessed anti-Semite Richard Wagner”, author of the terrible text “Judaism in Music” – but after the musician and concentration camp survivor Esther Bejarano.