Nike Wagner () (born 9 June 1945) is a German

dramaturge A dramaturge or dramaturg (from Ancient Greek δραματουργός – dramatourgós) is a literary adviser or editor in a theatre, opera, or film company who researches, selects, adapts, edits, and interprets scripts, libretti, texts, and pr ...

, arts administrator and author. She directed the festival , and has been the director of the

Beethovenfest The Beethovenfest ('Beethoven Festival') is a festival of classical music in Bonn, Germany, dedicated mostly to the music of Ludwig van Beethoven who was born there. It dates back to 1845, when the composer's 75th anniversary of birth was celebra ...

from 2014. The daughter of Wieland Wagner, she is a great-granddaughter of

Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, essayist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most o ...

, and a great-great‑granddaughter of

Franz Liszt Franz Liszt (22 October 1811 – 31 July 1886) was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor and teacher of the Romantic music, Romantic period. With a diverse List of compositions by Franz Liszt, body of work spanning more than six ...

. She devoted books to the

Wagner family The family of the composer Richard Wagner: Family of Carl Friedrich Wagner Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Wagner (1770–1813), a police actuary ∞ 1798 (1778–1848), daughter of a baker (after being widowed, in 1814 she became the partner of the pa ...

and its cultural and political influence.

Career

Wagner was born in

Überlingen Überlingen (; ) is a German city on the northern shore of Lake Constance (Bodensee) in Baden-Württemberg near the German-Swiss border, border with Switzerland. After the city of Friedrichshafen, it is the second-largest city in the Bodenseek ...

Lake Constance Lake Constance (, ) refers to three bodies of water on the Rhine at the northern foot of the Alps: Upper Lake Constance (''Obersee''), Lower Lake Constance (''Untersee''), and a connecting stretch of the Rhine, called the Seerhein (). These ...

in Germany, the daughter of Wieland Wagner and the choreographer Gertrud Reissinger. Her paternal great-grandfather was

, and she is also the great-great‑granddaughter of

. She grew up in Wahnfried, Bayreuth, until her father's death in 1966, whereupon her uncle Wolfgang Wagner had the house measured and asked her widowed mother to pay rent. She studied musicology, literature and theatre in Berlin, and holds a Ph.D. from

Northwestern University Northwestern University (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...

in Evanston, Illinois, obtained in 1980 under the direction of Erich Heller. She is the author of several important books on a variety of subjects, which include Karl Kraus (''Geist und Geschlecht: Karl Kraus und die Erotik der Wiener Moderne'', Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1982 — a work based on her doctoral dissertation) and the Wagner family (''The Wagners: The Dramas of a Musical Dynasty'', Princeton, New Jersey,

Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial ...

, 2001). Her article questioning the propriety of public subsidies given to high-profile cultural events in general, and the Bayreuth Festival in particular (at present c. US$6.5 million annually), ''Im Fadenkreuz der Kulturpolitik'', published in the July 2006 issue of ''Cicero: Magazin für politische Kultur'', engendered controversy within Germany. In 1999 Wagner became a member of the

Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung The Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung (in English German Academy for Language and Literature) was founded on 28 August 1949, on the 200th birthday of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in the Paulskirche, Frankfurt, Paulskirche in Frankfurt. I ...

, and has served as its vice president since 2011. In 2001, she made a bid for directorship of the

Bayreuth Festival The Bayreuth Festival () is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of stage works by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner are presented. Wagner himself conceived and promoted the idea of a special ...

, together with Gérard Mortier, who had changed the

Salzburg Festival The Salzburg Festival () is a prominent festival of music and drama established in 1920. It is held each summer, for five weeks starting in late July, in Salzburg, Austria, the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart's operas are a focus of ...

, but did not expect to win. In 2004, Wagner became the director of the ', which she named ''Pèlerinages'' in honour of Liszt. She stood down from the post in September 2013. In 2013 she was named the director of the

, and assumed this post in January 2014. She has recognized Wagner's relation to Beethoven, who modeled his first composition on Beethoven's works. She focused less on Beethoven's symphonies, but presented more chamber music, often in contrast with contemporary works in the genre.

Other activities

* Bonner Akademie für Forschung und Lehre praktischer Politik (BAPP), Member of the Board of Trustees *

Deutsche Bank Deutsche Bank AG (, ) is a Germany, German multinational Investment banking, investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange. ...

, Member of the Advisory Board (since 2017) * Goethe Institute, Member of the Committee for the Goethe Medal

Selected publications

* Nike Wagner, ''et al.'', ''Mann, sei nicht so hysterisch'' (Munich, Matthes und Seitz, 1991). * Nike Wagner, ''Wagner-Theater'' (Frankfurt am Main, Insel-Verlag, 1998). * Nike Wagner, ''Traumtheater: Szenarien der Moderne'' (Frankfurt am Main, Insel-Verlag, 2001).

Awards

* 1999: member of the

* member of the ''Literaturklasse'' of the Sächsische Akademie der Künste * 2012: Honorary professor at the PH Heidelberg bestellt Dr. Nike Wagner als Honorarprofessorin
PDF * 2013: Order of Merit of the Free State of Thuringia * 2022 Honorary doctorate of the University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar

Notes

References

* Jan Brachmann, ‘Das Zertrümmern ist langweilig geworden: Nike Wagner über Heimweh, Autoritäten, Bayreuther Marktlärm und ostdeutsche Kaffeepausen’, ''Berliner Zeitung'', 21 August 2004, p. M4 (Magazin Section) n interview with Nike Wagner * David Littlejohn, ntitled review of Nike Wagner's ''The Wagners: The Dramas of a Musical Dynasty'' ''Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association'', vol. 58, No. 4 (June 2002), pp. 828–831.