Sunday 16 August 2020

Wagner and Ludwig von der Pfordten

(Article originally published in The Cambridge Wagner Encyclopedia, ed. Nicholas Vazsonyi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)) 



Pfordten, Ludwig Karl Heinrich, Freiherr von der (b. Ried im Innkreis, 11 Sep. 1811; d. Munich, 18 Aug. 1880), politician and jurist. Held professorships in Würzburg and Leipzig. Appointed Minister of Education by Frederick Augustus II of Saxony in 1848. Wagner failed to interest him in his “Plan for the Organization of a German National Theatre for the Kingdom of Saxony.” Bavarian Minister-President and Foreign Minister from 1849-59 and 1864-6. During the 1850s, Pfordten failed to unite the smaller German kingdoms under Bavarian leadership against Prussia and Austria. He advised Maximilian II against a Munich staging of Tannhäuser, a slight Ludwig II held against him. Suspicious of Wagner’s influence upon the King, and horrified at his plans for a music school and festival theater, Pfordten and colleagues manufactured a public scandal in 1865, compelling Ludwig to choose, in Pfordten’s terms, between the love and respect of his faithful subjects and the friendship of Richard Wagner. Pfordten’s second ministry proved disastrous, Bavaria emerging on the losing side in the Austro-Prussian War (1866).