Marketing German identity: Richard Wagner's 'Enterprise'

Wagner described himself as the "most German," the embodiment of the "German spirit." Scholarship has historically regarded this Germanness as an expression of ideology later instrumentalized for political purposes. A close look at the non-dramatic texts from his Paris years (1840-41) suggests that his self-anointed Germanness was also a marketing strategy. In the Paris essays, Wagner appropriates existing literary tropes and discursive formations to fashion himself as "the" German composer. Given the crowded field of French and Italian opera, Wagner established a unique profile for himself even before he devised his own brand of national opera.