Houston Stewart Chamberlain
born Portsmouth, Sept 9, 1885; died Bayreuth, Jan 9, 1927
Documents associated with this person:
British-born writer, but having German citizenship from 1916; author of books on political philosophy and natural science; son-in-law of Richard Wagner, about whom he wrote extensively.
Educated in England, France, and Switzerland (where he learned about racial typology from Carl Voigt), Chamberlain settled in Austria in 1889. Having become a member of the Wagner circle in the 1880s and contributed to the cult of Bayreuth in the 1890s, he married Wagner's daughter Eva in 1908, moving to Germany in 1909. During World War I, he engaged in propaganda for Germany, for which service he received the Iron Cross from the Emperor.
His two-volume Die Grundlagen des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts [The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century] (Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1899; Eng. trans. 1910), a survey of Western history in racial terms, became a point of reference for the pan-Germanic movement, and later a source of National-Socialist philosophy.
His books on Wagner and Wagner's music include:
- Das Drama Richard Wagners: Eine Anregung (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1892, 6/1921; Eng. trans., 1923)
- Richard Wagners echte Briefe an Ferdinand Praeger (Bayreuth: Grau'sche Buchhandlung, 1894, 2/1908)
- 1876-1896: Die ersten zwanzig Jahre der Bayreuther Bühnenfestspiele (Bayreuth: Lorenz Ellwanger, 1896)
- Richard Wagner (Munich: Verlagsanstalt für Kunst und Wissenschaft, 1896, 9/1936; Eng. trans., 1897)
- Parsifal-Märchen (Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1900, 4/1923)
- Lebenswege meines Denkens (Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1919)
- Mein Weg nach Bayreuth (Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1937) [introduction by P. Bülow]
Sources:
- Wikipedia
- NGDM2 (2001 and online)