To understand this “Jew” question thoroughly, one should remember the admiration, the just admiration, in which Mendelssohn was held in this country. He was the idol of English musicians. That he should have been “assailed” by Wagner because of his Hebraic descent was unpardonable. This was the spirit of hostility with which the larger proportion of the press received him, seeing in him the personal enemy of the “Jew” Mendelssohn. And thus it happened that references to this question were continually being made, and discussions, occasionally of an angry character, were thrust upon us. What Richard Wagner wrote in 1852, the date the paper was first published, he adhered to in 1855, and what is more, in 1869, when he was master of the situation, he somewhat pertinaciously appended a letter to the original indictment, from which he did not recede one step.
When Wagner had almost attained the zenith of his fame, at a time when his weight and genius were admitted, he then deliberately placed on record that years of his earlier suppression and ostracism from great musical centres were due, and due alone, to the power wielded by the Jews, and their determination to keep his works out of sight where possible.
The article, “Judaism in Music,” was originally published in “Die Neue Zeitschrift,” under the nom de plume of “Freethought.” At the time the journal was edited by Franz Brendel, and when the subject-matter of the article is known, it will be admitted that the editor was courageous, and perhaps no one will be surprised at the hostile acts which followed. Poor Wagner seems to have been much troubled at the difficult position in which he had placed his friend. No sooner had the article appeared, he told me, than about a dozen of Brendel’s co-professors at the Leipzic conservatoire sent forward a petition to the directors of the Institute urging the dismissal of the editor, but, though the signatories of the document were such names as Moritz Hauptmann, David, Joachim, Rietz, Moschelles (all Jews), Brendel retained his post. Of course there was no attempt at withholding the name of the real author; it was at once admitted. It was a bold act to first publish the paper in Leipzic, for though Richard Wagner’s birthplace, it had received, as it were, a Jewish baptism from the lengthened sojourn of Mendelssohn there.