Winifred Wagner: A Life At The Heart Of Hitler's Bayreuth

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Description

The first major unbiased biography of the First Lady of Hitler's Bayreuth. Born Winifred Williams in 1897, she was adopted, aged nine, by distant relatives in Berlin. In 1915, the eighteen-year-old Winifred married into the Wagner family when they needed an heir to secure the Wagner heritage and the festival site at Bayreuth. In 1923, Hitler made a pilgrimage to Wagner's grave in Bayreuth. So began a close, lifelong friendship between 'Winnie and Wolf'. She became a founder member of the Nazi party and from 1933 the town of Bayreuth at festival time was the centre of the German political world.

Reviews

"* 'A riveting biography of the British- born woman who married into the Wagner family and became Hitler's friend' Sunday Times (Culture) * 'Consistently enthralling book... displays truly impressive enterprise in locating quite new sources' THES * 'Hamann has approached her subject with powerful sensitivity and scholarship and the translation by Alan Bance flows swimmingly' The Irish Times * 'In laying bare one woman's moral failings, Hamann leaves the reader with a greater understanding of how millions managed to embrace the evil in their midst' The Glasgow Herald"

Author Bio

Brigitte Hamann studied history and German literature in Munster and Vienna. She is the author of several books on Austrian history, including Hitler's Vienna: A Dictator's Apprenticeship, published in English by OUP, which was a critically acclaimed, international bestseller. She lives in Vienna.