[Wagner, Richard. (1813–1883)]
1849 "May Uprising" Arrest Warrant
Original Steckbrief (arrest warrant) broadside, Zweite Beilage zu No.174 der Leipziger Zeitung. June 23, 1849. 1 page, 2 sides. 25.3 x 20.2 cm. Expertly repaired and restored with japan paper, with minor losses not affecting relevant text. Exceedingly rare, we have traced only one library-copy worldwide (Leipziger Universitätsbibliothek) and have found only one similar copy (of the later 1853 warrant) at auction in the past 20 years.“The old world is in ruins from which a new world will arise; for the sublime goddess Revolution comes rushing and roaring on the wings of storm…So up, ye peoples of earth! Up ye mourners, ye oppressed, ye poor! And up ye others, who strive in vain to cloak the inner desolation of your hearts with the idle show of might and riches!”
- Wagner, writing in the Volksblätter in 1849 (translation from Ernest Newman, ii (1937), pp. 57-8)
Wagner had moved to Dresden with his wife Wilhelmine Minna Planer in 1842 and was eventually appointed the Royal Saxon Court Conductor. It was during this period that he staged the first of his three middle-period operas, Der fliegende Holländer and Tannhäuser. But Wagner had become increasingly involved in leftist politics and played an enthusiastic role in a nationalist movement of the independent German States, calling for constitutional freedoms and for the unification of the weak princely states into a single nation. Along with some friends and associates - chiefly August Röckel (editor of the radical left-wing paper Volksblätter) and the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin - Wagner played a minor role in the “May Uprising” which broke out when King Frederick Augustuss II of Saxony dissolved Parliament and rejected a new constitution pressed upon him by the people. The abortive revolution was quickly crushed by an allied force of Saxon and Prussian troops, and warrants were issued for the arrest of the revolutionaries. While Röckel and Bakunin were imprisoned, Wagner managed to flee, first to Paris and then to Zurich, but spent the next 12 years in exile.
The present Steckbrief is a very rare survival from this period, in which Wagner is described as being “37-38 years old, of medium height, with brown hair and wearing eyeglasses.” The warrant also includes orders for the arrest of Gottfried Semper (1803-1879), now best remembered as the architect of the Semper Opera House in Dresden (1838-1841), who also fled Germany and did not return until the 1862 amnesty granted to the revolutionaries. (3326)
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