PhD ThesisThe Wagner institution at Bayreuth, after Wagner, was shaped as much by the psychologies
of those to whom the composer’s legacy was entrusted as it was by purely historical and
political events. Entwining musicological, philosophical, sociological, and psychoanalytic
discourses, this revisionist and hermeneutic history of Bayreuth focuses on three individuals
whose lives were acutely intertwined with the cultural and political evolution of the
establishment: Cosima Wagner, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and Winifred Wagner. Their
personal and social paths were embedded in larger political and cultural changes, especially
German nationalism, yet despite the intensity of their nationalist affinities none was
indigenously German and in childhood each lacked those influences now considered essential
for effective individuation. Following an initial discussion on Wagner, character studies of
each applying, particularly, Jungian and Eriksonian theory explore the extent to which those
absences and related factors informed not only their personal development but also the
dynamics of their respective relationships with Wagner from which our perception of the
composer and Bayreuth as an institution derives
