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The letter, written on a yellowing
double-spread sheet of paper, was penned by Wagner in Lucerne,
Switzerland in 1869. It was apparently intended for the French
philosopher Edouard Schoure, said Meron Eren, of the Kedem
Auction House.
The buyer's identity was not made public.
In the letter, Wagner attempts to explain the ideas in his
anti-Semitic essay "Judaism in Music" to Schoure and writes that
the French were unable to discern "the destructive influence of
the Jewish spirit on modern culture", the Kedem website said.
Wagner, whose expansive operas are hailed as musical
masterpieces, was Adolf Hitler's favorite composer and he and
his Nazi followers embraced the composer's anti-Semitic writings
and ideology.
Wagner died in 1883 in Venice, more than six years before
Hitler's birth in Austria.
"Surprisingly, this letter came from a collector in Israel who
probably bought it at an auction in Europe ten or 20 years ago,"
the auction house chief Eren told Reuters.
Eren said that selling an anti-Semitic letter in Israel was "a
problem for us" but that private collectors or museums focusing
on the Holocaust and hatred of Jews would be interested in the
item.
"We think this is the right thing to do," he said.
Wagner's music is rarely performed in Israel, where it evokes
memories of the Holocaust, although some leading musicians have
called for an end to the unofficial ban.
(Reporting by Eli Berlzon and Dedi Hayoun, Writing by Ori Lewis;
Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
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