Bayreuther Blätter was a monthly newsletter

Newsletter

A newsletter is a regularly distributed publication generally about one main topic that is of interest to its subscribers. Newspapers and leaflets are types of newsletters. Additionally, newsletters delivered electronically via email have gained rapid acceptance for the same reasons email in...

 founded in 1878 by its editor Hans von Wolzogen

Hans von Wolzogen

Baron Hans Paul von Wolzogen , was a German man of letters, editor and publisher. He is best known for his connection with Richard Wagner.-Childhood:...

, with the encouragement of Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

, for visitors to the Bayreuth Festival

Bayreuth Festival

The Bayreuth Festival is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th century German composer Richard Wagner are presented...

 in Bavaria

Bavaria

Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...

, which celebrates Wagner's opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

s. The journal continued to appear until 1938, the year of Wolzogen's death.

The journal carried frequent articles by Wagner himself as well as contributions from many of his circle. Some of these were very substantial; for example, Wagner's essays Religion and Art (October 1880) and Heroism and Christianity (September 1881). From 1880 to 1896 the journal carried extracts from the detailed recollections by Heinrich Porges

Heinrich Porges

Heinrich Porges was a Czech-Austrian choirmaster, music critic and writer of Jewish descent.-Life:...

 of Wagner's rehearsal and staging techniques.

The Bayreuther Blätter remains an important source of information about the Bayreuth Festival in Wagner's last years and about the opinions of his devoted followers.

The critic Eduard Hanslick

Eduard Hanslick

Eduard Hanslick was a Bohemian-Austrian music critic.-Biography:Hanslick was born in Prague, the son of Joseph Adolph Hanslick, a bibliographer and music teacher from a German-speaking family, and one of his piano pupils, the daughter of a Jewish merchant from Vienna...

 wrote in 1882:

For a later age, which will be able to look back at the Wagner epidemic

Epidemic

In epidemiology, an epidemic , occurs when new cases of a certain disease, in a given human population, and during a given period, substantially exceed what is expected based on recent experience...

 of our days in a spirit of calm evaluation, if also one of incredulous astonishment, the Bayreuther Blätter may yet prove to be of no little cultural-historical significance [...] The future cultural historian of Germany will be able to give authentic testimony, on the basis of the first five volumes of this journal, of how strongly the delirium tremens

Delirium tremens

Delirium tremens is an acute episode of delirium that is usually caused by withdrawal from alcohol, first described in 1813...

of the Wagnerian intoxication raged amongst us, and what sort of abnormalities of thought and feeling it occasioned in the 'cultured' people of its time

Sources

Thomas S. Grey, Hanslick contra Wagner, in Richard Wagner and his World, ed. Thomas Grey, Princeton, 2009 ISBN 9780691143668