Bruce Alan Wagner (born March 20, 1954) is an American novelist, actor, screenwriter, producer, and director based in Los Angeles known for his acerbic view of the Hollywood entertainment industry.

Personal life

Wagner was born in Madison, Wisconsin, to Morton Wagner and Bernice Maletz. At the age of four, his family moved to San Francisco, then to Los Angeles four years later. He attended Beverly Vista Elementary School in Beverly Hills, CA. until the 8th grade. He attended Beverly Hills High School but dropped out in his junior year. He worked in bookstores, drove an ambulance for Schaefer Ambulance Service, and drove a limousine at the Beverly Hills Hotel. In 1989, he married actress Rebecca De Mornay. They later divorced. He married Laura Peterson in 2009.

Career

Wagner began writing articles for magazines, and writing scripts. His first screenplay, ''Young Lust'', was produced by Robert Stigwood but was never released. It was that experience that ultimately led him to write his modern take on F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Pat Hobby" short stories (about an alcoholic screenwriter who never gets ahead).

Wagner self-published ''Force Majeure: The Bud Wiggins Stories'', which sold about one thousand copies out of West Hollywood's famed Book Soup. The book was well reviewed and led to a publishing deal with Random House. He is currently published by Simon and Schuster.

He has written essays and op-ed pieces for ''The New Yorker'', ''The New York Times'', ''Art Forum'' and ''Vanity Fair'', while his novel ''The Chrysanthemum Palace'' was a PEN/Faulkner finalist in 2006. He has also written essays and prefaces for books by photographers William Eggleston and Manuel Alvarez Bravo, and painters Ed Ruscha and Richard Prince.

He was the executive producer and co-writer (with Ullman) of ''Tracey Ullman's State of the Union'' series on Showtime. He adapted his novel "Still Holding" for the cable channel EPIX. Wagner is co-producing with Oliver Stone. Stone produced ''Wild Palms,'' the mini-series Wagner created, based on a cartoon that he wrote for ''Details'' magazine. ''Wild Palms'' aired on ABC in 1993.

Mysticism

After interviewing Carlos Castaneda for ''Details'' magazine in 1994, Wagner became part of Castaneda's inner circle under the assumed name of Lorenzo Drake. He directed the first videos on Tensegrity for Cleargreen and married the mystic Carol Tiggs in 1995. Wagner continues to be close to the group since Castaneda's death in 1998. His first autobiographical piece about his experience with the shaman and author Castaneda appeared in the Fall 2007 issue of Tricycle magazine. After Wagner's novel ''Memorial'' was favorably reviewed in that magazine by a Buddhist monk, Wagner wrote its editor, James Shaheen, a letter of thanks, and Shaheen invited him to contribute an essay about Castaneda. More recently, Wagner studied with Indian guru Ramesh Balsekar.

Novels

''Force Majeure (novel)'' (1991)

''I'm Losing You'' (1996)

''I'll Let You Go'' (2002)

''Still Holding'' (2003)

''The Chrysanthemum Palace'' (2005)

''Memorial'' (2006)

Screenplays

''A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors'' (1987), "story by" credit, shared with Wes Craven

''Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills'' (1989)

''Wild Palms'' (1993)

''White Dwarf (film) (1995)

''I'm Losing You'' (1998), also director

''Women in Film'' (2001), also director

''Maps to the Stars'' (forthcoming)

References

External links

Spike Magazine interview

The Art of Reality in Tricycle

Category:1954 births Category:American novelists Category:American film directors Category:Carlos Castaneda Category:Living people Category:Writers from Wisconsin Category:People from Madison, Wisconsin

fr:Bruce Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner (; ; 22 May 1813 13 February 1883) was a German composer, conductor, theatre director and essayist, primarily known for his operas (or "music dramas", as they were later called). Wagner's compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex texture, rich harmonies and orchestration, and the elaborate use of leitmotifs: musical themes associated with individual characters, places, ideas or plot elements. Unlike most other opera composers, Wagner wrote both the music and libretto for every one of his stage works.

Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works such as ''The Flying Dutchman'' and ''Tannhäuser'' which were in the romantic traditions of Weber and Meyerbeer, Wagner transformed operatic thought through his concept of the ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' ("total work of art"). This would achieve the synthesis of all the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, and was announced in a series of essays between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised this concept most fully in the first half of the monumental four-opera cycle ''Der Ring des Nibelungen''. However, his thoughts on the relative importance of music and drama were to change again and he reintroduced some traditional operatic forms into his last few stage works including ''Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg''.

Wagner pioneered advances in musical language, such as extreme chromaticism and quickly shifting tonal centres, which greatly influenced the development of European classical music. His ''Tristan und Isolde'' is sometimes described as marking the start of modern music. Wagner's influence spread beyond music into philosophy, literature, the visual arts and theatre. He had his own opera house built, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, which contained many novel design features. It was here that the ''Ring'' and ''Parsifal'' received their premieres and where his most important stage works continue to be performed today in an annual festival run by his descendants. Wagner's views on conducting were also highly influential. His extensive writings on music, drama and politics have all attracted extensive comment in recent decades, especially where they have antisemitic content.

Wagner achieved all of this despite a life characterised, until his last decades, by political exile, turbulent love affairs, poverty and repeated flight from his creditors. His pugnacious personality and often outspoken views on music, politics and society made him a controversial figure during his life, which he remains to this day. The impact of his ideas can be traced in many of the arts throughout the twentieth century.

Biography

Early years

Richard Wagner was born at No. 3 ('The House of the Red and White Lions'), the Brühl, in the Jewish quarter of Leipzig, the ninth child of Carl Friedrich Wagner, who was a clerk in the Leipzig police service, and his wife Johanna Rosine (née Paetz), the daughter of a baker. Wagner's father died of typhus six months after Richard's birth, following which Wagner's mother began living with the actor and playwright Ludwig Geyer, who had been a friend of Richard's father. In August 1814 Johanna married Geyer, and moved with her family to his residence in Dresden. Until he was fourteen, Wagner was known as Wilhelm Richard Geyer. He almost certainly suspected that Geyer was his natural father.

Geyer's love of the theatre was shared by his stepson, and Wagner took part in his performances. In his autobiography, Wagner recalled once playing the part of an angel. The boy Wagner was also hugely impressed by the Gothic elements of Weber's ''Der Freischütz''. In late 1820, Wagner was enrolled at Pastor Wetzel's school at Possendorf, near Dresden, where he received some piano instruction from his Latin teacher. He could not manage a proper scale but preferred playing theatre overtures by ear. Geyer died in 1821, when Richard was eight. Subsequently, Wagner was sent to the Kreuz Grammar School in Dresden, paid for by Geyer's brother. The young Wagner entertained ambitions as a playwright, his first creative effort (listed as 'WWV 1') being a tragedy, ''Leubald'', begun at school in 1826, which was strongly influenced by Shakespeare and Goethe. Wagner was determined to set it to music; he persuaded his family to allow him music lessons.

By 1827, the family had moved back to Leipzig. Wagner's first lessons in harmony were taken in 1828–1831 with Christian Gottlieb Müller. In January 1828 he first heard Beethoven's 7th Symphony and then, in March, Beethoven's 9th Symphony performed in the Gewandhaus. Beethoven became his inspiration, and Wagner wrote a piano transcription of the 9th Symphony. He was also greatly impressed by a performance of the Requiem of Mozart. From this period date Wagner's early piano sonatas and his first attempts at orchestral overtures.

In 1829 he saw the dramatic soprano Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient on stage, and she became his ideal of the fusion of drama and music in opera. In his autobiography, Wagner wrote, "If I look back on my life as a whole, I can find no event that produced so profound an impression upon me." Wagner claimed to have seen Schröder-Devrient in the title role of ''Fidelio''; however, it seems more likely that he saw her performance as Romeo in Bellini's ''I Capuleti e i Montecchi.''

He enrolled at the University of Leipzig in 1831 where he became a member of the Studentenverbindung Corps Saxonia Leipzig. He also took composition lessons with the cantor of Saint Thomas Church, Christian Theodor Weinlig. Weinlig was so impressed with Wagner's musical ability that he refused any payment for his lessons, and arranged for Wagner's piano sonata in B flat (which was consequently dedicated to him) to be published as the composer's op. 1. A year later, Wagner composed his ''Symphony in C major'', a Beethovenesque work performed in Prague in 1832 and at the Leipzig Gewandhaus in 1833. He then began to work on an opera, ''Die Hochzeit'' (The Wedding), which he never completed.

In 1833, Wagner's older brother Karl Albert managed to obtain Richard a position as choir master in Würzburg. In the same year, at the age of 20, Wagner composed his first complete opera, ''Die Feen'' (''The Fairies''). This opera, which clearly imitated the style of Carl Maria von Weber, would go unproduced until half a century later, when it was premiered in Munich shortly after the composer's death in 1883.

Meanwhile, Wagner held a brief appointment as musical director at the opera house in Magdeburg during which he wrote ''Das Liebesverbot'' (''The Ban on Love''), based on Shakespeare's ''Measure for Measure''. This was staged at Magdeburg in 1836, but closed before the second performance, leaving the composer (not for the last time) in serious financial difficulties. In 1834 Wagner had fallen for the actress Christine Wilhelmine "Minna" Planer. After the disaster of ''Das Liebesverbot'' he followed her to Königsberg where she helped him to get an engagement at the theatre. The two married in Königsberg on 24 November 1836. In June 1837 Wagner moved to the city of Riga, then in the Russian Empire, where he became music director of the local opera. Minna had recently left Wagner for another man but Richard took her back; this was but the first debacle of a troubled marriage that would end in misery three decades later.

By 1839, the couple had amassed such large debts that they fled Riga to escape from creditors (debt would plague Wagner for most of his life). During their flight, they and their Newfoundland dog, ''Robber'', took a stormy sea passage to London, from which Wagner drew the inspiration for ''The Flying Dutchman'' (with a story based on a sketch by Heinrich Heine). The Wagners spent 1839 to 1842 in Paris, where Richard made a scant living writing articles and arranging operas by other composers, largely on behalf of the Schlesinger publishing house. However, he also completed his third and fourth operas ''Rienzi'' and ''The Flying Dutchman'' during this stay. His relief on leaving Paris for Dresden was recorded in his "Autobiographic Sketch" of 1842 "For the first time I saw the Rhine with hot tears in my eyes, I, poor artist, swore eternal fidelity to my German fatherland."

Dresden

Wagner had completed writing ''Rienzi'' in 1840. Largely through the strong support of Giacomo Meyerbeer, it was accepted for performance by the Dresden Court Theatre (''Hofoper'') in the German state of Saxony. In 1842, Wagner moved to Dresden, where ''Rienzi'' was staged to considerable acclaim on 20 October. Wagner lived in Dresden for the next six years, eventually being appointed the Royal Saxon Court Conductor. During this period, he staged there ''The Flying Dutchman'' (2 January 1843) and ''Tannhäuser'' (19 October 1845), the first two of his three middle-period operas. Wagner also mixed with artistic circles in Dresden, including the composer Ferdinand Hiller and the architect Gottfried Semper.

The Wagners' stay at Dresden was brought to an end by Richard's involvement in leftist politics. A nationalist movement was gaining force in the states of the German Confederation, calling for constitutional freedoms and the unification of Germany as one nation state. Richard Wagner played an enthusiastic role in the socialist wing of this movement, regularly receiving guests who included the radical editor August Röckel, and the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. He was also influenced by the ideas of Proudhon. Widespread discontent in Dresden came to a head in April 1849, when King Frederick Augustus II of Saxony rejected a new constitution. The May Uprising broke out, in which Wagner played a minor supporting role. The incipient revolution was quickly crushed by an allied force of Saxon and Prussian troops, and warrants were issued for the arrest of the revolutionaries. Wagner had to flee, first visiting Paris and then settling in Zurich.

Exile, Schopenhauer and Mathilde Wesendonck

Wagner spent the next twelve years in exile. He had completed ''Lohengrin'', the last of his middle-period operas before the Dresden uprising, and now wrote desperately to his friend Franz Liszt to have it staged in his absence. Liszt, who proved to be a true friend, eventually conducted the premiere in Weimar in August 1850.

Nevertheless, Wagner found himself in grim personal straits, isolated from the German musical world and without any income to speak of. Before leaving Dresden, he had drafted a scenario that would eventually become the four opera cycle ''Der Ring des Nibelungen''. He initially wrote the libretto for a single opera, ''Siegfrieds Tod'' (''Siegfried's Death'') in 1848. After arriving in Zurich he expanded the story to include an opera ''Der junge Siegfried'' (''Young Siegfried'') exploring the hero's background. He completed the text of the cycle by writing the libretti for ''Die Walküre'' and ''Das Rheingold'' and revising the other libretti to agree with his new concept, completing them in 1852. Meanwhile, his wife Minna, who had disliked the operas he had written after ''Rienzi'', was falling into a deepening depression and then Wagner himself fell victim to ill-health, according to Ernest Newman "largely a matter of overwrought nerves", which made it difficult for him to continue writing.

Wagner's primary published output during his first years in Zurich was a set of notable essays: "The Art-Work of the Future" (1849), in which he described a vision of opera as ''Gesamtkunstwerk'', or "total work of art", in which the various arts such as music, song, dance, poetry, visual arts, and stagecraft were unified; "Judaism in Music" (1850), a tract directed against Jewish composers; and "Opera and Drama" (1851), which described the aesthetics of drama which he was using to create the ''Ring'' operas.

Wagner began composing ''Das Rheingold'' in November 1853, following it immediately with ''Die Walküre'' in 1854. He then began work on the third opera, now called ''Siegfried'', in 1856 but finished only the first two acts before deciding to put the work aside to concentrate on a new idea: ''Tristan und Isolde''.

Wagner had two independent sources of inspiration for ''Tristan und Isolde''. The first came to him in 1854, when his poet friend Georg Herwegh introduced him to the works of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. Wagner would later call this the most important event of his life. His personal circumstances certainly made him an easy convert to what he understood to be Schopenhauer's philosophy, a deeply pessimistic view of the human condition. He would remain an adherent of Schopenhauer for the rest of his life, even after his fortunes improved.

One of Schopenhauer's doctrines was that music held a supreme role amongst the arts. He claimed that music is the direct expression of the world's essence, which is blind, impulsive will. Wagner quickly embraced this claim, which must have resonated strongly despite its contradiction of his previous view, expressed in ''Opera and Drama,'' that the music in opera had to be subservient to the drama. Wagner scholars have since argued that this Schopenhauerian influence caused Wagner to assign a more commanding role to music in his later operas, including the latter half of the ''Ring'' cycle, which he had yet to compose. Many aspects of Schopenhauerian doctrine undoubtedly found their way into Wagner's subsequent libretti. For example, the self-renouncing cobbler-poet Hans Sachs in ''Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg'', generally considered Wagner's most sympathetic character, although based loosely on a historical person, is a quintessentially Schopenhauerian creation.

Wagner's second source of inspiration was the poet-writer Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of the silk merchant Otto Wesendonck. Wagner met the Wesendoncks in Zurich in 1852. Otto, a fan of Wagner's music, placed a cottage on his estate at Wagner's disposal. During the course of the next five years, the composer was eventually to become infatuated with his patron's wife. Though Mathilde seems to have returned some of his affections, she had no intention of jeopardizing her marriage. Nevertheless, the affair inspired Wagner to put aside his work on the ''Ring'' cycle (which would not be resumed for the next twelve years) and began work on ''Tristan'', based on the Arthurian love story ''Tristan and Iseult''. While planning the opera, Wagner composed the ''Wesendonck Lieder'', five songs for voice and piano setting poems by Mathilde. Two of these settings are explicitly subtitled by Wagner as 'studies for ''Tristan und Isolde'' '.

The uneasy affair collapsed in 1858, when Minna intercepted a letter from Wagner to Mathilde. After the resulting confrontation, Wagner left Zurich alone, bound for Venice, where he sojourned in the Palazzo Giustinian. The following year, he once again moved to Paris to oversee production of a new revision of ''Tannhäuser'', staged thanks to the efforts of Princess Pauline von Metternich. The premiere of the Paris ''Tannhäuser'' in 1861 was an utter fiasco, due to disturbances caused by members of the Jockey Club. Further performances were cancelled, and Wagner hurriedly left the city.

The political ban which had been placed on Wagner in Germany after he had fled Dresden was lifted in 1861. The composer settled in Biebrich in Prussia, where he began work on ''Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg'', the idea for which had come during a visit he had made to Venice with the Wesendoncks. Despite the failure of ''Tannhäuser'' in Paris, the possibility that ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' would never be finished, and Wagner's unhappy personal life at the time of writing it, this opera is his only mature comedy.

Between 1861 and 1864 Wagner tried to have ''Tristan und Isolde'' produced in Vienna. Despite numerous rehearsals the opera remained unperformed, and gained a reputation as being "impossible", which further added to Wagner's financial woes. In 1862, Wagner finally parted with Minna, though he (or at least his creditors) continued to support her financially until her death in 1866. He claimed to be unable to travel to her funeral due to an "inflamed finger".

Patronage of King Ludwig II

Wagner's fortunes took a dramatic upturn in 1864, when King Ludwig II succeeded to the throne of Bavaria at the age of 18. The young king, an ardent admirer of Wagner's operas since childhood, had the composer brought to Munich. He settled Wagner's considerable debts, and proposed to stage ''Tristan'', ''Die Meistersinger'', the ''Ring'', and the other operas Wagner planned. Wagner also began to dictate his autobiography, ''Mein Leben'', at the King's request. To Wagner, it seemed significant that his rescue by Ludwig coincided with his learning the news of the death of his supposed enemy Meyerbeer, noting ungratefully that "this operatic master, who had done me so much harm, should not have lived to see this day".

After grave difficulties in rehearsal, ''Tristan und Isolde'' premiered at the National Theatre in Munich on 10 June 1865, the first Wagner premiere in almost 15 years. (The premiere had been scheduled for 15 May, but had been delayed by bailiffs acting for Wagner's creditors; and also because the Isolde, Malvina Schnorr von Carolsfeld, was hoarse and needed time to recover). The conductor of this premiere was Hans von Bülow, whose wife Cosima had given birth in April that year to a daughter, named Isolde, the child not of von Bülow but of Wagner.

Cosima was 24 years younger than Wagner and was herself illegitimate, the daughter of the Countess Marie d'Agoult, who had left her husband for Franz Liszt. Liszt disapproved of his daughter seeing Wagner, though the two men were friends. The indiscreet affair scandalized Munich, and to make matters worse, Wagner fell into disfavour among members of the court, who were suspicious of his influence on the king. In December 1865, Ludwig was finally forced to ask the composer to leave Munich. He apparently also toyed with the idea of abdicating in order to follow his hero into exile, but Wagner quickly dissuaded him.

Ludwig installed Wagner at the Villa Tribschen, beside Switzerland's Lake Lucerne. ''Die Meistersinger'' was completed at Tribschen in 1867, and premièred in Munich on 21 June the following year. In October, Cosima finally convinced Hans von Bülow to grant her a divorce, but this did not materialize until after she had two more children with Wagner; another daughter, named Eva, after the heroine of ''Meistersinger'', and a son Siegfried, named for the hero of the ''Ring''. Minna Wagner had died the previous year and so Richard and Cosima were now able to marry. The wedding took place on 25 August 1870. On Christmas Day of that year, Wagner arranged a surprise performance of the ''Siegfried Idyll'' for Cosima's birthday. The marriage to Cosima lasted to the end of Wagner's life.

Bayreuth

Wagner, settled into his newfound domesticity, turned his energies toward completing the ''Ring'' cycle. At Ludwig's insistence, "special previews" of the first two works of the cycle, ''Das Rheingold'' and ''Die Walküre'', were performed at Munich in 1869 and 1870, but Wagner wanted the complete cycle to be performed in a new, specially designed opera house.

In 1871, he decided on the small town of Bayreuth as the location of his new opera house. The Wagners moved there the following year, and the foundation stone for the Bayreuth Festspielhaus ("Festival Theatre") was laid. In order to raise funds for the construction, "Wagner Societies" were formed in several cities, and Wagner himself began touring Germany conducting concerts. However, sufficient funds were raised only after King Ludwig stepped in with another large grant in 1874. Later that year, the Wagners moved into their permanent home at Bayreuth, a villa that Richard dubbed ''Wahnfried'' ("Peace/freedom from delusion/madness", in German). The expenses of Bayreuth and of Wahnfried however meant that Wagner still sought other sources of income by conducting or taking on commissions like the ''Centennial March'' for America.

The Festspielhaus finally opened on 13 August 1876 with ''Das Rheingold'', now taking its place as the first evening of the premiere of the complete ''Ring'' cycle, and has continued to be the site of the Bayreuth Festival ever since; the Festival has been overseen since 1973 by the Richard-Wagner-Stiftung (Richard Wagner Foundation), the members of which include a number of Wagner's descendants.

Last years

Following the first Bayreuth festival Wagner began work on ''Parsifal'', his final opera. The composition took four years, much of which Wagner spent in Italy for health reasons. During this period he also wrote a series of essays, including some reactionary writings on religion and art which recanted his earlier views. Many of these—including "Religion and Art" (1880) and "Hero-dom and Christendom" (1881)—appeared in the journal ''Bayreuther Blätter'', founded in 1880 by Wagner and Hans von Wolzogen for Wagnerite visitors to Bayreuth.

Wagner completed ''Parsifal'' in January 1882, and a second Bayreuth Festival was held for the new opera which was premiered on 26 May. Wagner was by this time extremely ill, having suffered through a series of increasingly severe angina attacks. During the sixteenth and final performance of ''Parsifal'' on 29 August, he secretly entered the pit during Act III, took the baton from conductor Hermann Levi, and led the performance to its conclusion.

After the Festival, the Wagner family journeyed to Venice for the winter. Wagner died of a heart attack at the age of sixty-nine on 13 February 1883 at Ca' Vendramin Calergi, a 16th century palazzo on the Grand Canal. Franz Liszt's two pieces for pianoforte solo entitled ''La lugubre gondola'' evoke the passing of a black-shrouded funerary gondola bearing Richard Wagner's remains over the Grand Canal. Wagner was buried in the garden of the Villa Wahnfried in Bayreuth.

Works

Opera

Wagner's operatic works are his primary artistic legacy.

Unlike other opera composers, who generally left the task of writing the libretto (the text and lyrics) to others, Wagner wrote his own libretti, which he referred to as "poems". Further, Wagner developed a compositional style in which the orchestra's role is equal to that of the singers. The orchestra's dramatic role, in the later operas, includes the use of leitmotivs, musical themes that can be interpreted as announcing specific characters, locales, and plot elements; their complex interweaving and evolution illuminates the progression of the drama. Ultimately he urged a new concept of opera often referred to as "music drama", (although he did not use or sanction this term himself) in which all musical poetic and dramatic elements were to be fused together—the ''Gesamtkunstwerk''.

Wagner's operas are typically characterized as belonging to three chronological periods.

Early stage (to 1842)

Wagner's first attempt at an opera, at the age of 17, was ''Die Laune des Verliebten''. This was abandoned at an early stage of composition, as was ''Die Hochzeit'' (''The Wedding''), on which Wagner worked in 1832. Wagner then completed ''Die Feen'' (''The Fairies'', 1833, unperformed in the composer's lifetime) and ''Das Liebesverbot'' (''The Ban on Love'', 1836, taken off after its first performance), before working on the aborted singspiel ''Männerlist grösser als Frauenlist (Men's cunning greater than women's)''. This was followed by ''Rienzi'' (1842), Wagner's first opera to be successfully staged. The compositional style of these early works was conventional—the relatively more sophisticated ''Rienzi'' showing the clear influence of Meyerbeerean Grand Opera—and did not exhibit the innovations that would mark Wagner's place in musical history. Later in life, Wagner said that he did not consider these immature works to be part of his oeuvre, and none of them have ever been performed at the Wagnerian Bayreuth Festival. These works have been only rarely revived in the last hundred years, although the overture to ''Rienzi'' is an occasional concert piece.

Middle stage (184351)

Wagner's middle stage output begins to show the deepening of his powers as a dramatist and composer. This period began with ''Der fliegende Holländer'' (1843) (''The Flying Dutchman''), followed by ''Tannhäuser'' (1845) and ''Lohengrin'' (1850). These three operas reinforced the reputation among the public in Germany and beyond that Wagner had begun to establish for himself with ''Rienzi''. However, during his exile following the 1849 May Uprising in Dresden he began to reconsider his entire concept of opera and eventually decided, as explained during a series of essays between 1849 and 1852, that these operas did not represent what he hoped to achieve. In his essay ''A Communication to My Friends'' (1851), intended as a preface to the printed libretti of the ''Dutchman'', ''Tannhäuser'' and ''Lohengrin'', Wagner (to the confusion of many of his friends, since at that time ''Lohengrin'' had not even been staged) effectively disowned these operas and declared his intention to strike out in new directions.

I shall never write an ''Opera'' more. As I have no wish to invent an arbitrary title for my works, I will call them Dramas [...]

I propose to produce my myth in three complete dramas, preceded by a lengthy Prelude (Vorspiel). [...]

At a specially-appointed Festival, I propose, some future time, to produce those three Dramas with their Prelude, ''in the course of three days and a fore-evening''. The object of this production I shall consider thoroughly attained, if I and my artistic comrades, the actual performers, shall within these four evenings succeed in ''artistically conveying my purpose to the true Emotional'' (not the Critical) ''Understanding'' of spectators who shall have gathered together expressly to learn it. [...]

Wagner later reconciled himself to the works of this period, though he reworked both ''Dutchman'' and ''Tannhäuser'' on several occasions. The three operas are the earliest works included into the Bayreuth canon, the list of mature operas which Cosima put on at the Bayreuth Festival after Wagner's death in accordance with his wishes. They continue to be regularly performed today and have been frequently recorded. They show increasing mastery in stagecraft, orchestration and atmosphere.

Late stage (18511882)

Starting the ''Ring''

thumb|Brünnhilde the Valkyrie, as illustrated by Arthur Rackham (1910)|alt=A youthful valkyrie, wearing armour, cloak and winged helmet and holding a spear, stands with one foot on a rock and looks intently towards the right foreground. In the background are trees and mountains.''Main articles: Der Ring des Nibelungen, Der Ring des Nibelungen: Composition of the music and Der Ring des Nibelungen: Composition of the poem'' Wagner's late dramas are considered his masterpieces. ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'', commonly referred to as the ''Ring'' cycle, is a set of four operas based loosely on figures and elements of Germanic mythology—particularly from the later Norse mythology—notably the Old Norse ''Poetic Edda'' and ''Volsunga Saga'', and the Middle High German ''Nibelungenlied''. They were also influenced by Wagner's concepts of ancient Greek drama, in which tetralogies were a component of Athenian festivals, and which he had amply discussed in his essay "Oper und Drama"

The first two components of the ''Ring cycle'' were ''Das Rheingold'' (''The Rhinegold'') (completed 1854) and ''Die Walküre'' (''The Valkyrie'') (completed 1856). In ''Das Rheingold'', with its "relentlessly talky "realism" [and] the absence of lyrical "numbers" ", Wagner came very close to the pure musical ideals of his 184951 essays. ''Die Walküre'', with Siegmund's almost full-blown aria (''Winterstürme'') in the first act, and the quasi-choral appearance of the Valkyries themselves, shows more 'operatic' traits, but has been assessed as "the music drama that most satisfactorily embodies the theoretical principles of "Oper und Drama". A thoroughgoing synthesis of poetry and music is achieved without any notable sacrifice in musical expression".

''Tristan und Isolde'' and ''Die Meistersinger''

While still composing the ''Ring'', (leaving the third ''Ring'' opera ''Siegfried'' uncompleted for the while), Wagner paused between 1857 and 1864 to compose the tragic love story ''Tristan und Isolde'' and his only mature comedy ''Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg'' (''The Mastersingers of Nuremberg''), two works which are also part of the regular operatic canon.

''Tristan und Isolde'' uses a story line deriving from the poem ''Tristan und Isolt'' by the 13th century poet Gottfried von Strassburg. Wagner noted that "its allpervading tragedy [...] impressed me so deeply that I felt convinced it should stand out in bold relief, regardless of minor details." This impact, together with his discovery of the philosophy of Schopenhauer in October 1854, led Wagner to find himself in a "serious mood created by Schopenhauer, which was trying to find ecstatic expression. It was some such mood that inspired the conception of a Tristan und Isolde." Wagner half-parodied the powerful erotic atmosphere of the opera in a letter to Mathilde Wesendonck:

Child! This Tristan is turning into something ''terrible''. This final act!!! I fear the opera will be banned [...] only mediocre performances can save me! Perfectly good ones will be bound to drive people mad.

The work was first performed in Munich on 10 June 1865, conducted by Hans von Bülow.

Tristan is often granted a special place in musical history. It has been described as "fifty years ahead of its time" because of its chromaticism, long-held discords, unusual orchestral colouring and harmony, and use of polyphony. Wagner himself felt that his musico-dramatical theories were most perfectly realised in this work with its use of "the art of transition" between dramatic elements and the balance achieved between vocal and orchestral lines.

''Die Meistersinger'' was originally conceived by Wagner in 1845 as a sort of comic pendant to ''Tannhäuser''. It was first performed in Munich, again under the baton of Bülow, on 21 June 1868, its accessibility making it an immediate success. It is "a rich, perceptive music drama widely admired for its warm humanity"; but because of its strong German nationalist overtones, it is also held up by some as an example of Wagner's reactionary politics and antisemitism.

Completing the ''Ring''

When Wagner returned, with the added experience of composing ''Tristan'' and ''Die Meistersinger'', to write the music for the last act of ''Siegfried'' and for ''Götterdämmerung'' (''Twilight of the Gods''), as the final part of the ''Ring'' was eventually called, his style had changed once again to one more recognisable as 'operatic' (though thoroughly stamped with his own originality as a composer, and suffused with leitmotivs) than the aural world of ''Rheingold'' and ''Walküre''. This was in part because the libretti of the four 'Ring' operas had been written in reverse order, so that the book for ''Götterdämmerung'' was conceived more 'traditionally' than that of ''Rheingold''; still, the self-imposed strictures of the ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' had become relaxed. As George Bernard Shaw sardonically (and slightly unfairly) noted,

:And now, O Nibelungen Spectator, pluck up; for all allegories come to an end somewhere[...] The rest of what you are going to see is opera, and nothing but opera. Before many bars have been played, Siegfried and the wakened Brynhild, newly become tenor and soprano, will sing a concerted cadenza; plunge on from that to a magnificent love duet[...]The work which follows, entitled Night Falls On The Gods [Shaw's translation of ''Götterdämmerung''], is a thorough grand opera.

However, the differences are also because of Wagner's development as a composer during the period in which he composed ''Tristan'', ''Meistersinger'' and also the Paris version of ''Tannhäuser''. From Act III of Siegfried onwards, the ''Ring'' becomes chromatic, and both harmonically more complex and more developmental in its treatment of leitmotifs. Having taken 26 years from the first draft of a libretto in 1848 until the completion of ''Götterdämmerung'' in 1874, the ''Ring'' represents in all about 15 hours of performance, the only undertaking of such size to be regularly represented on the world's stages.

''Parsifal''

Wagner's final opera, ''Parsifal'' (1882), which was his only work written especially for his Festspielhaus in Bayreuth and which is described in the score as a "Bühnenweihfestspiel" (festival play for the consecration of the stage), has a storyline suggested by elements of the legend of the Holy Grail. It also however carries elements of Buddhist renunciation suggested by Wagner's readings of Schopenhauer. Wagner described it to Cosima as his "last card". The composer's treatment of Christianity in the opera, its eroticism, and its supposed relationship to ideas of German nationalism (and of antisemitism) have continued to render it controversial for non-musical reasons. However, musically it has been held to represent a continuing development of the composer's style , with "a diaphanous score of unearthly beauty and refinement".

Non-operatic music

Apart from his operas, Wagner composed relatively few pieces of music. These include a single symphony (written at the age of 19), a Faust Overture (the only completed part of an intended symphony on the subject), and some overtures, choral and piano pieces. His most commonly performed work not drawn from an opera is the ''Siegfried Idyll'', a piece for chamber orchestra written for the birthday of his second wife, Cosima. The ''Idyll'' draws on several motifs from the ''Ring'' cycle, though it is not part of the ''Ring''. Also performed are the ''Wesendonck Lieder'' for voice and piano, properly known as ''Five Songs for a Female Voice'', which were composed for Mathilde Wesendonck while Wagner was working on ''Tristan''. An oddity is the ''American Centennial March'' of 1876, commissioned by the city of Philadelphia (on the recommendation of conductor Theodore Thomas, who was subsequently very disappointed with the work when it arrived) for the opening of the Centennial Exposition, for which Wagner was paid $5,000.

The rarely performed ''Das Liebesmahl der Apostel'' (''The Love Feast of the Apostles'') is a piece for male choruses and orchestra, composed in 1843. Wagner, who had been elected at the beginning of the year to the committee of a cultural association in the city of Dresden, received a commission to evoke the theme of Pentecost. The premiere took place at the Dresdner Frauenkirche on 6 July 1843, and was performed by around a hundred musicians and almost 1,200 singers. The concert was very well received.

After completing ''Parsifal'', Wagner expressed an intention to turn to the writing of symphonies. However, no sketches for such works have survived, if indeed they were undertaken.

The overtures and orchestral passages from Wagner's middle and late-stage operas are commonly played as concert pieces. For most of these, Wagner wrote short passages to conclude the excerpt so that it does not end abruptly. Another familiar extract is the "Bridal Chorus" from ''Lohengrin'', frequently played as the bride's processional wedding march in English-speaking countries.

Writings

Wagner was an extremely prolific writer, authoring hundreds of books, poems, and articles, as well as voluminous correspondence, throughout his life. His writings covered a wide range of topics, including politics, philosophy, and detailed analyses of his own operas. Essays of note include "Art and Revolution" (1849), "Opera and Drama" (1851), an essay on the theory of opera, and "Das Judenthum in der Musik" ("Jewishness in Music", 1850), a polemic directed against Jewish composers in general, and Giacomo Meyerbeer in particular. He also wrote various autobiographical works, including "My Life" (1880). In his later years Wagner became a vociferous opponent of experimentation on animals and in 1879 he published an open letter, "Against Vivisection", in support of the animal rights activist Ernst von Weber.

There have been several editions of Wagner's writings, including a centennial edition in German edited by Dieter Borchmeyer (which however omitted the essay "Das Judenthum in der Musik") The English translations of Wagner's prose in 8 volumes by W. Ashton Ellis, (189299), are still in print and commonly used, despite their deficiencies. A complete edition of Wagner's correspondence, (estimated to amount to between 10,000 and 12,000 surviving items), of which the first volume appeared in 1967, is still under way.

Influence and legacy

Influence on music

Wagner's later musical style, with its unprecedented exploration of emotional expression, introduced new ideas in harmony, melodic process (leitmotiv) and operatic structure. Notably from ''Tristan und Isolde'' onwards, he explored the limits of the traditional tonal system that gave keys and chords their identity, pointing the way to atonality in the 20th century. Some music historians date the beginning of modern classical music to the first notes of ''Tristan'', the so-called Tristan chord.

In his lifetime, and for some years after, Wagner inspired fanatical devotion. For a long period, many composers were inclined to align themselves with or against Wagner's music. Anton Bruckner and Hugo Wolf were indebted to him especially, as were César Franck, Henri Duparc, Ernest Chausson, Jules Massenet, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Hans Pfitzner and dozens of others. Gustav Mahler said, "There was only Beethoven and Richard [Wagner] and after them, nobody". The twentieth century harmonic revolutions of Claude Debussy and Arnold Schoenberg (tonal and atonal modernism, respectively) have often been traced back to ''Tristan'' and ''Parsifal''. The Italian form of operatic realism known as verismo owed much to Wagnerian reconstruction of musical form.

Wagner made a major contribution to the principles and practice of conducting. His essay "About Conducting" (1869) advanced the earlier work of Hector Berlioz and proposed that conducting was a means by which a musical work could be re-interpreted, rather than simply a mechanism for achieving orchestral unison. He exemplified this approach in his own conducting, which was significantly more flexible than the disciplined approach of Mendelssohn; in his view this also justified practices which would today be frowned upon, such as the rewriting of scores. Wilhelm Furtwängler felt that Wagner and von Bülow, through their interpretative approach, inspired a whole new generation of conductors (including Furtwängler himself).

Influence on literature, philosophy and the visual arts

Wagner's influence on literature and philosophy is significant.

[Wagner's] protean abundance meant that he could inspire the use of literary motif in many a novel employing interior monologue; [...] the Symbolists saw him as a mystic hierophant; the Decadents found many a frisson in his work.

Friedrich Nietzsche was part of Wagner's inner circle during the early 1870s, and his first published work ''The Birth of Tragedy'' proposed Wagner's music as the Dionysian rebirth of European culture in opposition to Apollonian rationalist decadence. Nietzsche broke with Wagner following the first Bayreuth Festival, believing that Wagner's final phase represented a pandering to Christian pieties and a surrender to the new German Reich. Nietzsche expressed his displeasure with the later Wagner in "The Case of Wagner" and "Nietzsche contra Wagner".

Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine worshipped Wagner. Edouard Dujardin, whose influential novel ''Les lauriers sont coupés'' is in the form of an interior monologue inspired by Wagnerian music, founded a journal dedicated to Wagner, ''La Revue Wagnérienne'', to which J. K. Huysmans and Téodor de Wyzewa contributed.

In the twentieth century, W. H. Auden once called Wagner "perhaps the greatest genius that ever lived", while Thomas Mann and Marcel Proust were heavily influenced by him and discussed Wagner in their novels. He is discussed in some of the works of James Joyce. Wagnerian themes inhabit T. S. Eliot's ''The Waste Land'', which contains lines from ''Tristan und Isolde'' and ''Götterdämmerung'' and Verlaine's poem on ''Parsifal''. Many of the Wagner's concepts, including his speculation about dreams, predated their investigation by Sigmund Freud. In a long list of other major cultural figures influenced by Wagner, Bryan Magee includes D. H. Lawrence, Aubrey Beardsley, Romain Rolland, Gérard de Nerval, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Rainer Maria Rilke and numerous others.

Opponents and supporters

Not all reaction to Wagner was positive. For a time, German musical life divided into two factions, Wagner's supporters and those of Johannes Brahms; the latter, with the support of the powerful critic Eduard Hanslick (of whom Beckmesser in ''Meistersinger'' is in part a caricature) championed traditional forms and led the conservative front against Wagnerian innovations. They were supported by the conservative leanings of some German music schools, including the Conservatory at Leipzig under Ignaz Moscheles and that at Cologne under the direction of Ferdinand Hiller. Even those who, like Debussy, opposed him ("that old poisoner") could not deny Wagner's influence. Indeed, Debussy was one of many composers, including Tchaikovsky, who felt the need to break with Wagner precisely because his influence was so unmistakable and overwhelming. 'Golliwogg's Cakewalk' from Debussy's ''Children's Corner'' piano suite contains a deliberately tongue-in-cheek quotation from the opening bars of ''Tristan''. Others who resisted Wagner's attraction included Gioachino Rossini ("Wagner has wonderful moments, and dreadful quarters of an hour"). In the 20th century Wagner's music was parodied by, amongst others Paul Hindemith and Hans Eisler.

Wagner's followers (known as Wagnerians or Wagnerites) have formed many Societies dedicated to the life, works, and operas of Wagner. Societies include: The Toronto Wagner Society, the Wagner Society of New York, the Wagner Society of the United Kingdom, The Wagner Society of New Zealand, The Wagner Society of Northern California, etc.

Theatre design and practice

Wagner was responsible for several theatrical innovations developed at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus (for the design of which he appropriated some of the ideas of his former colleague, Gottfried Semper, which he had solicited for a proposed new opera house at Munich). These innovations include darkening the auditorium during performances, and placing the orchestra in a pit out of view of the audience. Adolphe Appia's stagings of Wagner operas at Bayreuth had far reaching consequences in theatre practice generally.

Influence on film

Wagner's concept of the use of leitmotifs and integrated musical expression has been an influence on many 20th and 21st century film scores. The critic Theodor Adorno has noted that the Wagnerian leitmotiv "leads directly to cinema music where the sole function of the leitmotiv is to announce heroes or situations so as to allow the audience to orient itself more easily". Some film scores have used Wagnerian themes (e.g. Francis Ford Coppola's ''Apocalypse Now'' which features a version of the ''Ride of the Valkyrie''). Most of Trevor Jones's soundtrack to John Boorman's Arthurian film ''Excalibur'' is from Wagner's operas.

Wagner has also been the subject of many biographical films. (See article List of films about Richard Wagner).

Influence on popular music

The rock composer Jim Steinman created what he called Wagnerian Rock. Heavy metal music is also said by some to show the influence of Wagner (as well as other classical composers). Joey DeMaio of Manowar called Wagner the 'Grandfather of Heavy Metal'. In Germany Rammstein and Joachim Witt who has named three of his albums ''Bayreuth'', claim inspiration from Wagner's music. German electronic composer Klaus Schulze dedicated his 1975 album ''Timewind'' to Wagner's death (two 30-min tracks, "Bayreuth Return" and "Wahnfried 1883"). He also used the alias Richard Wahnfried for a part of his discography. Slovenian avant-garde group Laibach created the sonic suite ''VolksWagner'' in 2009 in collaboration with the Slovenian Radio Symphony Orchestra and composer-conductor Izidor Leitinger, using material from ''Tannhäuser'', the ''Siegfried Idyll'' and ''The Ride of the Valkyries''. Phil Spector's wall of sound recording technique was heavily influenced by Wagner.

Controversies

Wagner's operas, writings, his politics, beliefs and unorthodox lifestyle made him a controversial figure during his lifetime. Following Wagner's death, the debate about his ideas and their interpretation, particularly in Germany during the 20th century, continued to make him politically and socially controversial in a way that other great composers are not. Much heat is generated by Wagner's comments on Jews, which continue to influence the way that his works are regarded, and by the essays he wrote on the nature of race from 1850 onwards, and their putative influence on the antisemitism of Adolf Hitler.

Racism and antisemitism

Wagner's writings on race and his antisemitism reflected some trends of thought in Germany during the 19th century.

Under a pseudonym in the ''Neue Zeitschrift für Musik'', Wagner published the essay "Das Judenthum in der Musik" in 1850 (originally translated as "Judaism in Music", by which name it is still known, but better rendered as "Jewishness in Music.") The essay attacked Jewish contemporaries (and rivals) Felix Mendelssohn and Giacomo Meyerbeer, and accused Jews of being a harmful and alien element in German culture. Wagner stated the German people were repelled by Jews' alien appearance and behaviour: "with all our speaking and writing in favour of the Jews' emancipation, we always felt instinctively repelled by any actual, operative contact with them." He argued that because Jews had no connection to the German spirit, Jewish musicians were only capable of producing shallow and artificial music. They therefore composed music to achieve popularity and, thereby, financial success, as opposed to creating genuine works of art. Wagner republished the pamphlet under his own name in 1869, with an extended introduction, leading to several public protests at the first performances of ''Die Meistersinger''. He repeated similar views in later articles, such as "What is German?" (1878, but based on a draft written in the 1860s).

Some biographers have suggested that antisemitic stereotypes are also represented in Wagner's operas. The characters of Mime in the ''Ring'', Sixtus Beckmesser in ''Die Meistersinger,'' and Klingsor in ''Parsifal'' are sometimes claimed as Jewish representations, though they are not explicitly identified as such in the libretto. Moreover, in all of Wagner's many writings about his works, there is no mention of an intention to caricature Jews in his operas; nor does any such notion appear in the diaries written by Cosima Wagner, which record his views on a daily basis over a period of eight years.

Despite his very public views on Jews, throughout his life Wagner had Jewish friends, colleagues and supporters. In his autobiography, ''Mein Leben'', Wagner mentions many friendships with Jews, referring to that with Samuel Lehrs in Paris as "one of the most beautiful friendships of my life."

The topic of Wagner and the Jews is further complicated by allegations, which may have been credited by Wagner himself, that he himself was of Jewish ancestry, via his supposed father Geyer. In reality, Geyer was not of Jewish descent, nor were either of Wagner's official parents. References to Wagner's supposed 'Jewishness' were made frequently in cartoons of the composer in the 1870s and 1880s, and more explicitly by Friedrich Nietzsche in his essay "The Wagner Case", where he wrote "a Geyer (vulture) is almost an Adler (eagle)". (Both 'Geyer' and 'Adler' were common Jewish surnames.)

Some biographers have asserted that Wagner in his final years came to believe in the racialist philosophy of Arthur de Gobineau, and according to Robert Gutman, this is reflected in the opera ''Parsifal''. Other biographers such as Lucy Beckett believe that this is not true. Wagner showed no significant interest in Gobineau until 1880, when he read Gobineau's "An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races". Wagner had completed the libretto for ''Parsifal'' by 1877, and the original drafts of the story date back to 1857. Wagner's writings of his last years indicate some interest in Gobineau's idea that Western society was doomed because of miscegenation between "superior" and "inferior" races.

Other interpretations

Wagner's ideas were amenable to socialist interpretations, which is not surprising given the composer's revolutionary inclinations in the 1840s, when many of his ideas on art were being formulated. Thus for example, George Bernard Shaw wrote in ''The Perfect Wagnerite'' (1883):

[Wagner's] picture of Niblunghome [Shaw's anglicization of ''Nibelheim'', the empire of Alberich in the ''Ring Cycle''] under the reign of Alberic is a poetic vision of unregulated industrial capitalism as it was made known in Germany in the middle of the nineteenth century by Engels's ''Condition of the Laboring Classes in England''

Left-wing interpretations of Wagner also inform the writings of Theodor Adorno amongst other Wagner critics. Walter Benjamin gave Wagner as an example of "bourgeois false consciousness", alienating art from its social context.

The writer Robert Donington has produced a detailed, if controversial, Jungian interpretation of the ''Ring cycle''. Others have also applied psychoanalytical techniques to Wagner's life and works.

Nazi appropriation

Adolf Hitler was an admirer of Wagner's music and saw in his operas an embodiment of his own vision of the German nation. There continues to be debate about the extent to which Wagner's views might have influenced Nazi thinking. The Nazis used those parts of Wagner's thought that were useful for propaganda and ignored or suppressed the rest. Although Hitler himself was an ardent fan of "the Master", many in the Nazi hierarchy were not and, according to the historian Richard Carr, resented attending these lengthy epics at Hitler's insistence.

There is evidence that music of Wagner was used at the Dachau concentration camp in 1933/4 to 'reeducate' political prisoners by exposure to 'national music'. However there seems to be no evidence to support claims, sometimes made, that his music was played at Nazi death camps during the Second World War.

Because of the associations of Wagner with antisemitism and Nazism, the performance of his music in the State of Israel has been a source of controversy. Breaking with tradition Wagner will be played at the Bayreuth's Wagner festival. Israeli music director Roberto Paternostro decided to break this taboo and "to divide the man from his art."

References

;Notes

Sources and further reading

Prose works by Wagner

Wagner, Richard, (ed. Dieter Borchmeyer) (1983) ''Richard Wagner Dichtungen und Schriften'', 10 vols. Frankfurt am Main.

Wagner, Richard (ed. and trans. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington) (1987) ''Selected Letters of Richard Wagner'', Dent. ISBN 0460046438; W. W. Norton and Company ISBN 978-0393025002.

Wagner, Richard (trans. Andrew Gray) (1992) ''My Life'', Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0306804816 Wagner's sometimes unreliable autobiography, covering his life to 1864, written between 1865 and 1880 and first published privately in German in a small edition between 1870 and 1880. The first (edited) public edition appeared in 1911. Gray's translation is the most comprehensive available.

Wagner, Richard: Collected Prose Works. tr. W. Ashton Ellis

::Wagner, Richard (1994c) Vol. 1 ''The Artwork of the Future and Other Works'', University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London. ISBN 9780803297524 ::Wagner, Richard (1995d) Vol. 2 ''Opera and Drama'', University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London. 1995. ISBN 0803297653 ::Wagner, Richard (1995c) Vol. 3 ''Judaism in Music and Other Essays'', University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London. ISBN 9780803297661 ::Wagner, Richard (1995a) Vol. 4 ''Art and Politics'', University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London. ISBN 9780803297746 ::Wagner, Richard (1995b) Vol. 5 ''Actors and Singers'', University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London. ISBN 9780803297739 ::Wagner, Richard (1994a) Vol. 6 ''Religion and Art'' , University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London. ISBN 9780803297645 ::Wagner, Richard (1994b) Vol. 7 ''Pilgrimage to Beethoven and Other Essays'', University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London. ISBN 9780803297630 ::Wagner, Richard (1995c) Vol. 8 ''Jesus of Nazareth and Other Writings'', University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London. ISBN 9780803297807

Other sources

Adorno, Theodor (trans. Rodney Livingstone) (2009) ''In Search of Wagner'' Verso Books, London. ISBN 9781844673445

Ashman, Mike (1982) "''Tannhäuser'' – an obsession" in: John, Nicholas (Series Editor) ''English National Opera/The Royal Opera House Opera Guide 12: Der Fliegende Holländer/The Flying Dutchman'', London, John Calder, ISBN 0714539201. pp. 7–15.

Beckett, Lucy (1981) ''Richard Wagner: Parsifal'', Cambridge University Press.

Borchmeyer, Dieter (2003) "Drama and the World of Richard Wagner", Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691114972

Bruen, Hanan (1993) ''Wagner in Israel: A conflict among Aesthetic, Historical, Psychological and Social Considerations'', Journal of Aesthetic Education, vol. 27 no. 1 (Spring 1993), pp. 99–103

Burbidge, Peter and Sutton, Richard (eds.) (1979) "The Wagner Companion", Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521296571

Dahlhaus, Carl (trans. Mary Whittall) (1979) ''Richard Wagner's Music Dramas'', Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521223973

Conway, David (2002) "'A Vulture is Almost an Eagle'......The Jewishness of Richard Wagner", ''Jewry in Music'', accessed 23 July 2010.

Dallas, Ian (1990) ''The New Wagnerian'', Freiburg Books. ISBN 978-8440474759

Daverio, John (2008) ''Tristan und Isolde: essence and appearance'', in Grey (2008) 115133

Deathridge, John (1982) "An Introduction to ''The Flying Dutchman''" in John, Nicholas (Series Editor) ''English National Opera/The Royal Opera House Opera Guide 12: Der Fliegende Holländer/The Flying Dutchman'', London, John Calder, ISBN 0714539201 pp. 13–26.

Deathridge, John (2008) ''Wagner Beyond Good and Evil'', Berkeley ISBN 9780520254534

Donnington, Robert (1979) ''Wagner's 'Ring' and its Symbols'' Faber Paperbacks London ISBN 0571 04818 8

Everett, Derrick (2008) "Wagner, Gobineau and ''Parsifal'': Gobineau as the inspiration for ''Parsifal''", ''http://www.monsalvat.no'', version of 26 June 2008, accessed 27 July 2010.

Fackler, Guido (tr. Peter Logan) (2007) "Music in Concentration Camps 1933–1945", ''Music and Politics'', Volume I, Number 1, (Winter 2007).

Grant, John (1999) "Excalibur: US movie" in John Clute & John Grant (Eds.) ''The Encyclopedia of Fantasy'', Orbit p. 324. ISBN 1-85723-893-1

Gregor-Dellin, Martin (1983) ''Richard Wagner — His Life, His Work, His Century'', Harcourt. ISBN 978-0151771516

Grey, Thomas S. (ed.) (2008) ''The Cambridge Companion to Wagner'', Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521644396

Gutman, Robert W. (1990) ''Wagner — The Man, His Mind and His Music'', Harvest Books. ISBN 978-0156776158

Higgins, Charlotte (2007) How the Nazis took flight from Valkyries and Rhinemaidens, ''The Guardian'', 3 July 2007, accessed 28 December 2008.

Horton, Paul C. (1999) Review of ''Psychoanalytic Explorations in Music: Second Series'' ed. Stuart Feder, American Journal of Psychiatry vol. 156 pp. 1109–1110, July 1999, consulted July 8, 2010

John, Eckhardt (2004) ''La musique dans la système concentrationnaire nazi'', in ''Le troisième Reich et al. Musique'', ed. Pascal Huynh, Paris ISBN 2213621357

Katz, Jacob (1986) ''The Darker Side of Genius: Richard Wagner's Anti-Semitism'', Hanover and London. ISBN 0874513685

Kennedy, Michael (1980) ''The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music'', Oxford ISBN 9780193113206

Kershaw, Ian (1999) ''Hitler 18891936: Hubris'', Penguin. ISBN 0140288988

Laibach (undated) "Laibach presents VolksWagner", www.laibach.nsk.si. (Accessed 23 July 2010)

Lee, M. Owen (1998) ''Wagner: The Terrible Man and His Truthful Art'', University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0802047212

Magee, Bryan (2001) ''The Tristan Chord: Wagner and Philosophy'', Metropolitan Books. ISBN 978-0805071894

Magee, Bryan (1988) ''Aspects of Wagner'', Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0192840127

Magic Circle Music (undated) "Artist biography: Manowar", maciccirclemusic.com, accessed 23 July 2010.

May, Thomas (2004) ''Decoding Wagner'', Amadeus Press. ISBN 978-1574670974

Martin, T. P. (1992) ''Joyce and Wagner: A Study in Influence'', Cambridge , 1992. ISBN 978-0521394871

McClatchie, Stephen (2008) ''Performing Germany in Wagner's 'Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg' '',in Grwy (2008) pp. 134–150

Millington, Barry (Ed.) (1992) ''The Wagner Compendium: A Guide to Wagner's Life and Music''. Thames and Hudson Ltd., London. ISBN 0028713591

Millington, Barry (2008) ''Der Ring des Nibelungen: conception and interpretation'' in Grey (2008), 7484

Millington, Barry (undated a) "Wesendonck, Mathilde" in ''Grove Music Online''. Oxford Music Online. (Subscription only, accessed July 20, 2010).

Millington, Barry (undated b) "Walküre, Die." In ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera'', edited by Stanley Sadie. ''Grove Music Online''. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/O003661 (Subscription only, accessed July 23, 2010).

Millington, Barry (undated c) "Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Die." In ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera'', edited by Stanley Sadie. ''Grove Music Online''. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/O003512 (Subscription only, accessed July 23, 2010).

Millington, Barry (undated d) "Parsifal." In ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera'', edited by Stanley Sadie. ''Grove Music Online''. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/O002803 (Subscription only, accessed July 23, 2010).

Newman, Ernest (1933) ''The Life of Richard Wagner'', 4 vols. ISBN 978-0685148242 (the classic biography, superseded by newer research but still full of many valuable insights)

Nicholson, Christopher (2007) "Richard and Adolf: Did Richard Wagner incite Adolf Hitler to commit the Holocaust?", Gefen Publishing House. ISBN 978-9652293602

Nietzsche, Friedrich (trans. Walter Kaufmann) (1967) ''The Case of Wagner'' in Nietsche (trans. Kaufmann) ''The Birth of Tragedy'' and ''The Case of Wagner'', Random House. ISBN 394 70369-3.

Overvold, Liselotte Z. (1976) ''Wagner's American Centennial March: Genesis and Reception'', Monatshefte (Univ.of Wisconsin),Vol.68 no.2 (Summer 1976), pp. 179–187

Painter, George D. (1983) ''Marcel Proust''. Penguin, Harmondsworth ISBN0140065121

Potter, Pamela R. (2008) ''Wagner and the Third Reich: myths and realities'', in ''The Cambridge Companion to Wagner'', ed. Thomas S. Grey, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521644396

Puffett, Derrick (1984) "''Siegfried'' in the Context of Wagner's Operatic Writing", in ''Siegfried: Opera Guide 28'' series ed. Nicholas John, John Calder (Publishers) Ltd. ISBN 0 7145 4040 4

Rose, John Luke (1981) "A Landmark in Musical History" in Nicholas John (series ed.) ''Tristan and Isolde: English National Opera Guide 6'', John Calder Publisher's Ltd. ISBN 0 7145 3849 3

Rose, Paul Lawrence (1996) ''Wagner:Race and Revolution'', London ISBN 057117888X

Ross, Alex (1998) ''The Unforgiven: Wagner and Hitler"'' in ''The New Yorker'', 10 August 1998. Copy on author's website used. Link accessed 10 July 2010.

Runciman, J.F. (1913) ''Wagner'', Project Gutenberg edition. here .

Salmi, Hannu (2005) ''Wagner and Wagnerism in Nineteenth-Century Sweden, Finland, and the Baltic Provinces: Reception, Enthusiasm, Cult'', Eastman Studies in Music. University of Rochester Press. ISBN 978-1580462075

Salmi, Hannu (2000) ''Imagined Germany. Richard Wagner's National Utopia'', Peter Lang Publishing. ISBN 978-0820444161

Scruton, Roger (2003) ''Death-Devoted Heart: Sex and the Sacred in Wagner's 'Tristan and Isolde''', Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195166910

Shaw, George Bernard (1898) ''The Perfect Wagnerite''. Online version at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1487/1487-h/1487-h.htm#2H_4_0011 accessed 20 July 2010.

Sietz, Reinhold and Wiegandt, Matthias (undated) "Hiller, Ferdinand." In ''Grove Music Online''. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/13041 (Subscription only, accessed July 23, 2010).

Skelton, Geoffrey (2002) "Bayreuth" in ''Grove Music Online'', Oxford Music Online. Version dated 28 February 2002, accessed 20 December 2009.

Spencer, Stewart (2000) ''Wagner Remembered'', Faber and Faber. ISBN 978-0571196531

Spiro, Jonathan Peter (2008) ''Defending the master race: conservation, eugenics, and the legacy of Madison Grant'', UPNE. ISBN 978 1 58465 715 5.

Spotts, Frederic (1994) ''Bayreuth: A History of the Wagner Festival'', New Haven and London ISBN 9780300066654

Tanner, M. (1995) ''Wagner'', Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691102900

Treadwell, James (2008) ''The Urge to Communicate''in Grey (2008), pp. 179–191

von Westernhagen, Kurt (1980) ''(Wilhelm) Richard Wagner'' in vol. 20 of Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. S. Sadie, London 1980

Wagner, Cosima (trans. Geoffrey Skelton) (1978) ''Diaries'', 2 vols. ISBN 978-0151226351

Walker, Alan (1996) ''Franz Liszt: The Final Years'', New York. ISBN 9780394525426

Walsh, Michael (1992) ''The Case of Wagner Again'', Time, January 13, 1992, consulted online 17.7.2010

Wapnewski, Peter (1992) ''Wagner's Musical Influence'', in ''The Wagner Handbook''

Weiner, Marc A. (1997) ''Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination'', Lincoln and London. ISBN 9780803297920

Westrup, Jack (1980) ''Conducting'' , in vol. 4 of Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. S. Sadie, London 1980

Žižek, Slavoj (2009) "Foreword: Why is Wagner Worth Saving" in Adorno (2009) viiixxvii.

External links

;Operas

Richard Wagner Opera, Richard Wagner operas, Wagner interviews, CDs, DVDs, Wagner calendar, Bayreuth Festival

Wagner Operas, site featuring photographs, video, MIDI files, scores, libretti, and commentary

RWagner.net, contains libretti of his operas, with English translations

Wagner website, assortment of articles on Wagner and his operas

Photo of Wagner's manuscript for the Bridal Chorus

''The Wagnerian Romances'' by Gertrude Hall

;Writings

The Wagner Library. English translations of Wagner's prose works, including some of Wagner's more notable essays.

;Pictures

The Richard Wagner Postcard-Gallery, a gallery of historic postcards with motives from Richard Wagner's operas.

gallica.bnf.fr Pictures of Richard Wagner and his family.

;Scores

;Other

BBC audio file. Discussion of Wagner on Radio 4 programme ''In our time''.

Bayreuth Festival

The National Archive of the Richard Wagner Foundation

The humanities.music.composers.wagner FAQ.

Richard Wagner Museum in the country manor Triebschen beside Lucerne, Switzerland where he and Cosima lived and worked from 1866 to 1872.

The Wagner Tuba

Category:1813 births Category:1883 deaths Category:19th-century German people Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:German composers Category:German conductors (music) Category:German Lutherans Category:German music critics Category:German theatre directors Category:German writers Category:German autobiographers Category:Honorary Members of the Royal Philharmonic Society Category:Antisemitism Category:Music from Leipzig Category:Opera composers Category:German opera librettists Category:Opera managers Category:People from Leipzig Category:People of the Revolutions of 1848 Category:Romantic composers Category:Romanticism Category:University of Leipzig alumni Richard Category:Walhalla enshrinees Category:19th-century theatre Category:Members of the Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art

af:Richard Wagner als:Richard Wagner ab:Рихард Вагнер ar:ريتشارد فاغنر an:Richard Wagner az:Rixard Vaqner bn:রিশার্ড ভাগনার zh-min-nan:Richard Wagner map-bms:Richard Wagner be:Вільгельм Рыхард Вагнер be-x-old:Рыхард Вагнэр bar:Richard Wagner bs:Richard Wagner br:Richard Wagner bg:Рихард Вагнер ca:Richard Wagner cv:Рихăрт Вакнĕр cs:Richard Wagner cy:Richard Wagner da:Richard Wagner de:Richard Wagner et:Richard Wagner el:Ρίχαρντ Βάγκνερ es:Richard Wagner eo:Richard Wagner ext:Richard Wagner eu:Richard Wagner fa:ریشارد واگنر hif:Richard Wagner fr:Richard Wagner fy:Richard Wagner fur:Richard Wagner ga:Richard Wagner gv:Richard Wagner gd:Richard Wagner gl:Richard Wagner gan:華格納 xal:Вагнер, Рихард ko:리하르트 바그너 hy:Ռիխարդ Վագներ hr:Richard Wagner id:Richard Wagner os:Вагнер, Рихард is:Richard Wagner it:Richard Wagner he:ריכרד וגנר jv:Richard Wagner pam:Richard Wagner ka:რიხარდ ვაგნერი kk:Вагнер, Рихард ky:Вагнер, Рихард sw:Richard Wagner la:Ricardus Wagner lv:Rihards Vāgners lb:Richard Wagner lt:Richard Wagner lij:Richard Wagner li:Richard Wagner hu:Richard Wagner mk:Рихард Вагнер ml:റിച്ചാർഡ് വാഗ്നർ mr:रिचर्ड वॅग्नर arz:ريتشارد فاجنر ms:Richard Wagner mn:Рихард Вагнер nah:Richard Wagner nl:Richard Wagner ja:リヒャルト・ワーグナー no:Richard Wagner nn:Richard Wagner oc:Richard Wagner uz:Richard Wagner pnb:رچرڈ ویگنر pms:Richard Wagner pl:Richard Wagner pt:Richard Wagner ro:Richard Wagner qu:Richard Wagner rue:Ріхард Ваґнер ru:Вагнер, Рихард sc:Richard Wagner sco:Richard Wagner sq:Richard Wagner simple:Richard Wagner sk:Richard Wagner sl:Richard Wagner ckb:ڕیچارد ڤاگنەر sr:Рихард Вагнер sh:Richard Wagner fi:Richard Wagner sv:Richard Wagner tl:Richard Wagner ta:ரிச்சார்ட் வாக்னர் tt:Рихард Вагнер th:ริชาร์ด วากเนอร์ tr:Richard Wagner uk:Ріхард Вагнер ur:رچرڈ واگنر vec:Richard Wagner vi:Richard Wagner vo:Richard Wagner war:Richard Wagner yi:ריכארד וואגנער yo:Richard Wagner zh-yue:華格納 bat-smg:Richard Wagner zh:理查德·瓦格纳

Coordinates	54°59′″N73°22′″N
{{infobox royalty| name	Robert I
succession	King of Scots
religion	Roamn Catholic
reign	1306–1329
coronation	25 March 1306
religion	Roman Catholic
predecessor	John
successor	David II
spouse	Isabella of Mar Elizabeth de Burgh
issue	Marjorie BruceDavid II of Scotland
issue-link	#Family and descendants
issue-pipe	more...
house	House of Bruce
father	Robert de Brus, 6th Lord of Annandale
mother	Marjorie, Countess of Carrick
birth date	July 11, 1274
birth place	Turnberry Castle, Ayrshire
death date	June 07, 1329
death place	Manor of Cardross
place of burial	Dunfermline Abbey (Body) – Melrose Abbey (Heart)

Robert I (11 July 1274 – 7 June 1329), often known as Robert the Bruce (Medieval Gaelic: ''Roibert a Briuis''; modern Scottish Gaelic: ''Raibeart Bruis''; Norman French: ''Robert de Brus'' or ''Robert de Bruys''), was King of Scots from March 25, 1306, until his death in 1329.

His paternal ancestors were of Scoto-Norman heritage (originating in Brix, Manche, Normandy), and his maternal of Franco-Gaelic. He became one of Scotland's greatest kings, as well as one of the most famous warriors of his generation, eventually leading Scotland during the Wars of Scottish Independence against the Kingdom of England. He claimed the Scottish throne as a fourth great-grandson of David I of Scotland, and saw the recognition of Scotland as an independent nation during his reign. Today in Scotland, Bruce is remembered as a national hero.

His body is buried in Dunfermline Abbey, while his heart is buried in Melrose Abbey. His embalmed heart was to be taken on crusade by his lieutenant and friend Sir James Douglas to the Holy Land, but only reached Moorish Granada, where it acted as a talisman for the Scottish contingent at the Battle of Teba.

Background and early life

Robert was the first son of Robert de Brus, 6th Lord of Annandale and Marjorie, Countess of Carrick. His mother was by all accounts a formidable woman who, legend would have it, kept Robert Bruce's father captive until he agreed to marry her. From his mother, he inherited the Gaelic Earldom of Carrick, and through his father a Royal lineage that would give him a claim to the Scottish throne. Although his date of birth is known, his place of birth is less certain, but it was probably Turnberry Castle in Ayrshire.

Very little is known of his youth. He was probably brought up in a mixture of the Anglo-French culture of northern England and south-eastern Scotland, and the Gaelic culture of Carrick and the Irish Sea, French being his father-tongue and Gaelic his mother-tongue. He may have been fostered with a local family, as was the custom (Barbour mentions his foster-brother); it is suspected that his brother Edward was fostered with his second-cousin Domhnall O'Neill. Robert's first appearance in history is on a witness list of a charter issued by Alasdair MacDomhnaill, Lord of Islay. His name appears in the company of the Bishop of Argyll, the vicar of Arran, a Kintyre clerk, his father and a host of Gaelic notaries from Carrick.

In 1292 his mother died, elevating the 18-year-old Robert to the Earldom of Carrick; this had the side effect of stripping his father of his jure uxoris claim to the title and lands. In November of the same year he saw Edward I, on behalf of the Guardians of Scotland, award the vacant Crown of Scotland to his grandfather's first cousin once removed, John Balliol, after a lobbying campaign known as the 'Great Cause'. Almost immediately his grandfather, Robert de Brus, 5th Lord of Annandale, resigned his Lordship of Annandale to Robert's father, possibly to avoid having to swear fealty to John as a vassal lord.

Later both father and son sided with Edward I against John, whom they considered a usurper and to whom Robert had not sworn fealty.

In April 1294, the younger Bruce had permission to visit Ireland for a year and a half, and, as a further mark of King Edward's favour, he received a respite for all the debts owed by him to the English Exchequer.

In 1295, Robert married his first wife, Isabella of Mar the daughter of Domhnall I, Earl of Mar and his wife Helen.

Beginning of the Wars of Independence

In August 1296, Bruce and his father swore fealty to Edward I of England at Berwick-upon-Tweed, but in breach of this oath, which had been renewed at Carlisle, the younger Robert supported the Scottish revolt against King Edward in the following year. Urgent letters were sent ordering Bruce to support Edward's commander, John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey (to whom Bruce was related) in the summer of 1297; but instead of complying, Bruce continued to support the revolt against Edward. On 7 July, Bruce and his friends made terms with Edward by a treaty called the Capitulation of Irvine. The Scottish lords were not to serve beyond the sea against their will, and were pardoned for their recent violence in return for swearing allegiance to King Edward. The Bishop of Glasgow, James the Steward, and Sir Alexander Lindsay became sureties for Bruce until he delivered his infant daughter Marjorie as a hostage which he never did, and he was soon actively fighting for the Scots again.

Shortly after the Battle of Stirling Bridge, Bruce again defected to the Scots; he laid waste to Annandale and burned the English-held castle of Ayr. Yet, when King Edward returned to England after his victory at the Battle of Falkirk, Annandale and Carrick were excepted from the Lordships and lands which he assigned to his followers; Bruce was seen as a waverer whose allegiance could be acquired.

William Wallace resigned as Guardian of Scotland after the Battle of Falkirk. He was succeeded by Robert Bruce and John Comyn as joint Guardians, but they could not see past their personal differences. As a nephew and supporter of King John, and as someone with a serious claim to the Scottish throne, Comyn was Bruce's enemy. In 1299, William Lamberton, Bishop of St. Andrews, was appointed as a third, neutral Guardian to try to maintain order between Bruce and Comyn. The following year, Bruce finally resigned as joint Guardian and was replaced by Sir Gilbert de Umfraville, Earl of Angus.

In May 1301, Umfraville, Comyn and Lamberton also resigned as joint Guardians and were replaced by Sir John de Soules as sole Guardian. Soules was appointed largely because he was part of neither the Bruce nor the Comyn camps and was a patriot. He was an active Guardian and made renewed efforts to have King John returned to the Scottish throne.

In July, King Edward I launched his sixth campaign into Scotland. Though he captured the castles of Bothwell and Turnberry, he did little to damage the Scots' fighting ability and, in January 1302, agreed to a nine-month truce. It was around this time that Robert the Bruce submitted to Edward, along with other nobles, even though he had been on the side of the patriots until then.

There were rumours that John Balliol would return as to regain the Scottish throne. Soules, who had probably been appointed by John, supported his return, as did most other nobles. But it was no more than a rumor and nothing came of it.

However, though recently pledged to support King Edward, it is interesting to note that Robert the Bruce sent a letter to the monks at Melrose Abbey in March 1302 which effectively weakened his usefulness to the English king. Apologising for having called the monks' tenants to service in his army when there had been no national call-up, Bruce pledged that, henceforth, he would "never again" require the monks to serve unless it was to "the common army of the whole realm", for national defence. Bruce also married his second wife that year, Elizabeth de Burgh, the daughter of Richard de Burgh, 2nd Earl of Ulster. By Elizabeth he had four children: David II, John (died in childhood), Matilda (who married Thomas Isaac and died at Aberdeen 20 July 1353), and Margaret (who married William de Moravia, 5th Earl of Sutherland in 1345).

In 1303, Edward invaded again, reaching Edinburgh, before marching to Perth. Edward stayed in Perth until July, then proceeded via Dundee, Brechin and Montrose, to Aberdeen, where he arrived in August. From there, he marched through Moray to Badenoch, before re-tracing his path back south to Dunfermline. With the country now under submission, all the leading Scots, except for William Wallace, surrendered to Edward in February 1304. John Comyn, who was by now Guardian, submitted to Edward.

The laws and liberties of Scotland were to be as they had been in the days of Alexander III, and any that needed alteration would be with the assent of King Edward and the advice of the Scots nobles.

On 11 June 1304, with both of them having witnessed the heroic efforts of their countrymen during King Edward's siege of Stirling Castle, Bruce and William Lamberton made a pact that bound them, each to the other, in “friendship and alliance against all men.” If one should break the secret pact, he would forfeit to the other the sum of ten thousand pounds. The pact is often interpreted as a sign of their deep patriotism despite both having already surrendered to the English.

With Scotland defenceless, Edward set about destroying her as a realm. Homage was again obtained under force from the nobles and the burghs, and a parliament was held to elect those who would meet later in the year with the English parliament to establish rules for the governance of Scotland. For all the apparent participation by Scots in the government, however, the English held the real power. The Earl of Richmond, Edward's nephew, was to head up the subordinate government of Scotland.

While all this took place, William Wallace was finally captured near Glasgow and was hanged, drawn and quartered in London on 23 August 1305.

In September 1305, Edward ordered Robert Bruce to put his castle at Kildrummy, "in the keeping of such a man as he himself will be willing to answer for," suggesting that King Edward suspected Robert was not entirely trustworthy and may have been plotting behind his back. However, an identical phrase appears in an agreement between Edward and his lieutenant and life-long friend, Aymer de Valence. Even more sign of Edward's distrust occurred when on October 10, 1305, Edward revoked his gift of Gilbert de Umfraville's lands to Bruce that he had made only six months before.

Robert Bruce as Earl of Carrick and now 7th Lord of Annandale, held huge estates and property in Scotland and a barony and some minor properties in England and had a strong claim to the Scottish throne. He also had a large family to protect. If he claimed the throne, he would throw the country into yet another series of wars, and if he failed, he would be sacrificing everyone and everything he knew.

The killing of Comyn in Dumfries

Bruce, like all his family, had a complete belief in his right to the throne. However his actions of supporting alternately the English and Scottish armies had led to a great deal of distrust towards Bruce among the “Community of the Realm of Scotland”. His ambition was further thwarted by the person of John Comyn. Comyn had been much more resolute in his opposition to the English; he was the most powerful noble in Scotland and was related to many more powerful nobles both within Scotland and England including relatives that held the earldoms of Buchan, Mar, Ross, Fife, Angus, Dunbar and Strathrean. Lordships of Kilbride, Kirkintilloch, Lenzie, Bedrule, Scraesburgh and sheriffdoms in Banff, Dingwall, Wigtown and Aberdeen. He also had a powerful claim to the Scottish throne through his descent from Donald III on his father's side and David I on his mother's side. Comyn was the nephew of Balliol.

According to Barbour and Fordoun, in the late summer of 1305 in a secret agreement sworn, signed and sealed, John Comyn agreed to forfeit his claim to the Scottish throne in favour of Robert Bruce upon receipt of the Bruce lands in Scotland should an uprising occur led by Bruce.

Whether the details of the agreement with Comyn are correct or not, King Edward moved to arrest Bruce while Bruce was still at the English court. Fortunately for Bruce, his friend, and Edward's son-in-law, Ralph de Monthermer learnt of Edward's intention and warned Bruce by sending him twelve pence and a pair of spurs. Bruce took the hint, and he and a squire fled the English court during the night. They made their way quickly for Scotland and the fateful meeting with Comyn at Dumfries.

According to Barbour, Comyn betrayed his agreement with Bruce to King Edward I, and when Bruce arranged a meeting for February 10, 1306 with Comyn in the Church of Greyfriars in Dumfries and accused him of treachery, they came to blows. Bruce killed Comyn in Dumfries before the high altar of the church of the monastery. The Scotichronicon says that on being told that Comyn had survived the attack and was being treated, two of Bruce's supporters, Roger de Kirkpatrick and John Lindsay, went back into the church and finished Bruce's work but Barbour tells no such story.

Bruce hurried from Dumfries to Glasgow, where, kneeling before Bishop Robert Wishart he made confession of his violence and sacrilege and was granted absolution by the Bishop. The clergy throughout the land was adjured to rally to Bruce by Wishart. In spite of this, Bruce was excommunicated for this crime. Realising that the 'die had been cast' and he had no alternative except to become king or a fugitive, Bruce asserted his claim to the Scottish crown.

English records still in existence today tell a completely different story. They state that the Comyn murder was planned in an attempt to gain the throne of Scotland. For this reason King Edward of England wrote to the Pope and asked for his excommunication of Robert Bruce. No records have ever been found in England stating that King Edward had any knowledge of treachery by Robert Bruce before his acts against Comyn. They state that King Edward did not hear of the murder of John Comyn until several days past his death.

Coronation at Scone – King Robert I

Barely seven weeks after Comyn was killed in Dumfries, Bruce was crowned King of Scots by Bishop William de Lamberton at Scone, near Perth on 25 March with all formality and solemnity. The royal robes and vestments which Robert Wishart had hidden from the English were brought out by the Bishop and set upon King Robert. The bishops of Moray and Glasgow were in attendance as well as the earls of Atholl, Menteith, Lennox, and Mar. The great banner of the kings of Scotland was planted behind his throne.

Isabella MacDuff, Countess of Buchan and wife of John Comyn, Earl of Buchan (a cousin of the murdered John Comyn), who claimed the right of her family, the MacDuff Earl of Fife, to crown the Scottish king for her brother, Duncan (or Donnchadh) – who was not yet of age, and in English hands – arrived the next day, too late for the coronation, so a second coronation was held and once more the crown was placed on the brow of Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, Lord of Annandale, King of the Scots.

From Scone to Bannockburn

In June 1306, he was defeated at the Battle of Methven and in August, he was surprised in Strathfillan, where he had taken refuge. His wife and daughters and other women of the party were sent to Kildrummy in August 1306 under the protection of Bruce's brother Neil Bruce and the Earl of Atholl and most of his remaining men. Bruce, with a small following of his most faithful men, including Sir James Douglas and Gilbert Hay, Bruce's brothers Thomas, Alexander and Edward, as well as Sir Neil Campbell and the Earl of Lennox fled.

Edward I marched north again in the spring. On his way, he granted the Scottish estates of Bruce and his adherents to his own followers and had published a bill excommunicating Bruce. Bruce's queen, Elizabeth, his daughter Marjorie, his sisters Christina and Mary, and Isabella MacDuff were captured in a sanctuary at Tain, and sent to harsh imprisonment, which included Mary and Isabella being hung in a cage at Roxburgh and Berwick castles respectively for about four years, and Bruce's brother Neil was executed. But, on 7 July, King Edward I died, leaving Bruce opposed by his son, Edward II.

It is still uncertain where Bruce spent the winter of 1306-07, most likely he spent it in the Hebrides (possibly sheltered by Christina of Garmoran) although Ireland is a serious possibility, and Orkney (under Norwegian rule at the time) or Norway proper although unlikely are not impossible.

Bruce and his followers returned to the Scottish mainland in February in two groups. One, led by Bruce and his brother Edward landed at Turnberry Castle and began a guerrilla war in south-west Scotland. The other, led by his brothers Thomas and Alexander, landed slightly further south in Loch Ryan; but they were soon captured and were executed.

In April, Bruce won a small victory over the English at the Battle of Glen Trool, before defeating Aymer de Valence, 2nd Earl of Pembroke at the Battle of Loudoun Hill. At the same time, James Douglas made his first foray for Bruce into south-western Scotland, attacking and burning his own castle in Douglasdale. Leaving his brother Edward in command in Galloway, Bruce travelled north, capturing Inverlochy and Urquhart Castles, burning Inverness Castle and Nairn to the ground, then unsuccessfully threatening Elgin.

Transferring operations to Aberdeenshire in late 1307, he threatened Banff before falling seriously ill, probably owing to the hardships of the lengthy campaign. Recovering, leaving John Comyn, 3rd Earl of Buchan unsubdued at his rear, Bruce returned west to take Balvenie and Duffus Castles, then Tarradale Castle on the Black Isle. Looping back via the hinterlands of Inverness and a second failed attempt to take Elgin, Bruce finally achieved his landmark defeat of Comyn at the Battle of Inverurie in May 1308, then overran Buchan and defeated the English garrison at Aberdeen. The Harrying of Buchan in 1308 was ordered by Bruce to make sure all Clan Comyn support was extinguished. Buchan had a very large population because it was the agricultural capital of northern Scotland and much of its population was loyal to the Clan Comyn even after the defeat of the Earl of Buchan. Most of the Comyn castles in Moray, Aberdeen and Buchan were destroyed and their inhabitants killed. Bruce ordered similar harryings in Argyle and Kintyre, in the territories of Clan Dougall. With these acts, Bruce had successfully destroyed the power of Clan Comyn, which had controlled much of northern and southwestern Scotland for over a hundred and fifty years.

He then crossed to Argyll and defeated the MacDougal Clan (relatives of the Comyns) at the Battle of Pass of Brander and took Dunstaffnage Castle, the last major stronghold of the Comyns.

In March 1309, he held his first Parliament at St. Andrews, and by August, he controlled all of Scotland north of the River Tay. The following year, the clergy of Scotland recognised Bruce as king at a general council. The support given to him by the church in spite of his excommunication was of great political importance.

The next three years saw the capture and reduction of one English-held castle or outpost after another: Linlithgow in 1310, Dumbarton in 1311, and Perth, by Bruce himself, in January 1312. Bruce also made raids into northern England and, landing at Ramsey in the Isle of Man, then laid siege to Castle Rushen in Castletown capturing it on 21 June 1313 to deny the island's strategic importance to the English. In the spring of 1314, Edward Bruce laid siege to Stirling Castle, whose governor, Philip de Mowbray, agreed to capitulate if not relieved before 24 June 1314. In March 1314, James Douglas captured Roxburgh, and Randolph captured Edinburgh Castle. In May, Bruce again raided England and subdued the Isle of Man.

The eight years of exhausting but deliberate refusal to meet the English on even ground have caused many to consider Bruce as one of the great guerrilla leaders of any age. This represented a transformation for one raised as a feudal knight.

The Battle of Bannockburn - 1314

Bruce secured Scottish independence from England militarily — if not diplomatically — at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314.

After Bannockburn - further confrontation with England then the Irish conflict

Freed from English threats, Scotland's armies could now invade northern England. Bruce also drove back a subsequent English expedition north of the border and launched raids into Yorkshire and Lancashire.

Buoyed by his military successes, Bruce's forces also invaded Ireland in 1315, purportedly to free the country from English rule (having received a reply to offers of assistance from Donal O'Neil, king of Tyrone), and to open a second front in the continuing wars with England. The Irish even crowned Edward Bruce as High King of Ireland in 1316. Robert later went there with another army to assist his brother.

To go with the invasion, Bruce popularised an ideological vision of a "Pan-Gaelic Greater Scotia" with his lineage ruling over both Ireland and Scotland. This propaganda campaign was aided by two factors. The first was his marriage alliance from 1302 with the de Burgh family of the Earldom of Ulster in Ireland; second, Bruce himself on his mother's side of Carrick, was descended from Gaelic royalty in Scotland as well as Ireland. Bruce's Irish ancestors included Eva of Leinster (d.1188), whose ancestors included Brian Boru of Munster and the kings of Leinster. Thus, lineally and geopolitically, Bruce attempted to support his anticipated notion of a pan-Gaelic alliance between Scottish-Irish Gaelic populations, under his kingship.

This is revealed by a letter he sent to the Irish chiefs, where he calls the Scots and Irish collectively ''nostra nacio'' (our nation), stressing the common language, customs and heritage of the two peoples:

The diplomacy worked to a certain extent, at least in Ulster, where the Scots had some support. The Irish chief, Donal O'Neil, for instance, later justified his support for the Scots to Pope John XXII by saying "the Kings of Lesser Scotia all trace their blood to our ''Greater Scotia'' and retain to some degree our language and customs."

The Bruce campaign to Ireland was characterised by some initial military success. However, the Scots failed to win over the non-Ulster chiefs, or to make any other significant gains in the south of the island, where people couldn't see the difference between English and Scottish occupation. Eventually it was defeated when Edward Bruce was killed at the Battle of Faughart. The Irish Annals of the period described the defeat of the Bruces by the English as one of the greatest things ever done for the Irish nation due to the fact it brought an end to the famine and pillaging brought on the Irish by both the Scots and the English.

Diplomacy

Robert Bruce's reign also witnessed some diplomatic achievements. The Declaration of Arbroath of 1320 strengthened his position, particularly ''vis-à-vis'' the Papacy. Pope John XXII eventually lifted Bruce's excommunication. In May 1328 King Edward III of England signed the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton, which recognised Scotland as an independent kingdom, and Bruce as its king.

Death

Robert died on 7 June 1329, at the Manor of Cardross, near Dumbarton He had suffered for some years from what some contemporary accounts describe as an "unclean ailment". The traditional view is that this was leprosy, but this was not mentioned in contemporary accounts, and is now disputed with syphilis, psoriasis, motor neurone disease and a series of strokes all proposed as possible alternatives.

His body lies buried in Dunfermline Abbey but before he died Robert requested that his heart should be removed and then carried in battle '' 'Against God's foes' ''. This was to make up for his failure to go on crusade during his life and atone for his sins, not least the murder of John Comyn in the Greyfriars church, Dumfries. Sir James Douglas and Sir Simon Locard were allotted the task. Bruce's preserved heart was placed in a silver casket, which Douglas then carried on a chain around his neck while Locard held the key (creating the surname Lockhart). When a projected international crusade failed to materialise, Douglas, Locard, and company sailed to Spain where Alfonso XI of Castile was mounting a campaign against the Moorish kingdom of Granada. Douglas was killed in battle during the siege of Teba in August 1330 while fulfilling his promise. His body and the casket containing the embalmed heart of Robert the Bruce were found together upon the field. They were conveyed back to Scotland by the two surviving companions, Sir William Keith of Galston and Sir Symon Locard. In accordance with Bruce's written request, it was buried at Melrose Abbey, in Roxburghshire. In 1920 the heart was discovered by archaeologists and was reburied, but the location was not marked. In 1996, a casket was unearthed during construction work. Scientific study by AOC archaeologists in Edinburgh, demonstrated that it did indeed contain a human heart and it was of appropriate age. It was reburied in Melrose Abbey in 1998, pursuant to the dying wishes of the King.

Family and descendants

Bruce's legitimate children were, with his first wife Isabella of Mar:

Marjorie, married Walter Stewart, 6th High Steward of Scotland, their son became King Robert II.

With his second wife Elizabeth de Burgh: Margaret, married William de Moravia, 5th Earl of Sutherland between 2 August and 28 September 1345. Had son, John (1346–1361).

Matilda (Maud), married first to Thomas Isaac, secondly to Richard de Kelso, fifth feudal lord of the Free Barony of Kelsoland.

David II, who as a child succeeded his father to the throne.

John, born October 1327 and died young. Buried in Restenneth Priory.

Bruce's family also included his brothers, Edward, Alexander, Thomas, and Neil, his sisters Christina, Isabel (Queen of Norway), Margaret, Matilda, and Mary, and his nephews Donald II, Earl of Mar and Thomas Randolph, 1st Earl of Moray.

Bruce's descendants include all later Scottish monarchs (except Edward Balliol whom Bruce loyalists would regard as a usurper) and all British monarchs since the Union of the Crowns in 1603. A large number of families definitely are descended from him but there is controversy about some claims.

Ancestry

{{ahnentafel-compact5 |style=font-size: 90%; line-height: 110%; |border=1 |boxstyle=padding-top: 0; padding-bottom: 0; |boxstyle_1=background-color: #fcc; |boxstyle_2=background-color: #fb9; |boxstyle_3=background-color: #ffc; |boxstyle_4=background-color: #bfc; |boxstyle_5=background-color: #9fe; |1= 1. Robert I of Scotland |2= 2. Robert de Brus |3= 3. Marjorie of Carrick |4= 4. Robert de Brus |5= 5. Isabella of Gloucester and Hertford |6= 6. Níall of Carrick |7= 7. Margaret Stewart |8= 8. Robert de Brus |9= 9. Isobel of Huntingdon |10= 10. Gilbert de Clare, 5th Earl of Hertford and Gloucester |11= 11. Isabel Marshal |12=12 Cailean (Nicol) mac Donnchaidh |13= 13. daughter |14= 14. Walter Steward of Dundonald |15= 15. Bethóc of Angus |16= 16. William de Brus |17= 17. Christina |18= 18. David of Scotland, Earl of Huntingdon |19= 19. Maud of Chester |20= 20. Richard de Clare, 4th Earl of Hertford |21= 21. Amice Fitz Robert |22= 22. William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke |23= 23. Isabel de Clare |24= 24. Donnchadh, Earl of Carrick |26= 26. Niall Ruadh Ó Néill |28= 28. Alan fitz Walter, 2nd High Steward of Scotland |29= 29. uncertain |30= 30. Gille Críst, Earl of Angus |31= 31. Marjorie of Huntingdon }}

Monuments and commemoration

Statues

Robert I was originally buried in Dunfermline Abbey, traditional resting-place of Scottish monarchs since the reign of Malcolm III. His tomb, imported from Paris, was extremely elaborate, carved from gilded alabaster. It was destroyed at the Reformation, but some fragments were discovered in the 19th century (now in the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh).

The site of the tomb in Dunfermline Abbey was marked by large carved stone letters spelling out "King Robert the Bruce" around the top of the bell tower, when the eastern half of the abbey church was rebuilt in the first half of the 19th century. In 1974 the Bruce Memorial Window was installed in the north transept, commemorating the 700th anniversary of the year of his birth. It depicts stained glass images of the Bruce flanked by his chief men, Christ, and saints associated with Scotland.

A 1929 statue of Robert the Bruce is set in the wall of Edinburgh Castle at the entrance, along with one of William Wallace.

Statues of the Bruce also stand outside Stirling Castle and Marischal College in Aberdeen.

Banknotes

From 1981 to 1989, Robert the Bruce was portrayed on £1 notes issued by the Clydesdale Bank, one of the three Scottish banks with right to issue banknotes. He was shown on the obverse crowned in battle dress, surrounded by thistles, and on the reverse in full battle armour in a scene from the Battle of Bannockburn. When the Clydesdale Bank discontinued £1 banknotes, Robert The Bruce's portrait was moved onto the bank's £20 banknote in 1990 and it has remained there to date.

Aircraft

The airline British Caledonian, named a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 (G-BHDI) after Robert the Bruce.

Legends

According to a legend, at some point while he was on the run during the winter of 1306–07, Bruce hid in a cave on Rathlin Island off the north coast of Ireland, where he observed a spider spinning a web, trying to make a connection from one area of the cave's roof to another. Each time the spider failed, it began again until it succeeded. Inspired by this, Bruce returned to inflict a series of defeats on the English, thus winning him more supporters and eventual victory. The story serves to illustrate the maxim: "if at first you don't succeed, try try again." Other versions have Bruce in a small house watching the spider try to make its connection between two roof beams; or, defeated for the seventh time by the English, watching the spider make its attempt seven times, succeeding on the eighth try.

But this legend appears for the first time in only a much later account, "Tales of a Grandfather" by Sir Walter Scott, and may have originally been told about his companion-in-arms Sir James Douglas (the "Black Douglas"), who had spent time hiding out in caves within his manor of Lintalee, which was then occupied by the English. The entire account may in fact be a version of a literary trope used in royal biographical writing. A similar story is told, for example, in Jewish sources about King David, and in Persian folklore about the Mongolian warlord Tamerlane and an ant.

The Bruce in fiction

The revolt of Robert the Bruce is the topic of Mollie Hunter's 1998 book ''The King's Swift Rider'', written from the point of view of a bold young Scot and future monk who joins the rebellion as a noncombatant.

In the 1995 film ''Braveheart'', Robert the Bruce is portrayed by Scottish actor Angus Macfadyen. The film incorrectly showed him taking the field at Falkirk as part of the English army; he never betrayed William Wallace (despite having changed sides). Wallace is also alleged to have been a complete supporter of Robert the Bruce, but Wallace was a supporter of the Balliol claim to the throne which Bruce consistently opposed.

Scottish author Nigel Tranter wrote a trilogy, considered largely accurate, based on the life of King Robert: ''The Steps to the Empty Throne'', ''The Path of the Hero King'' and ''The Price of the King's Peace.'' This has been published in one volume as ''The Bruce Trilogy''.

Chronicles of the reign of Robert the Bruce (or Robert de Brus) are published in a series titled ''Rebel King, Hammer of the Scots'' (2002); ''Rebel King, The Har'ships'' (2004); and ''Rebel King, Bannok Burn'' (2006). Two more volumes are planned. Historical fiction, but very close to Scottish history, this most comprehensive series on Robert's reign starts in January 1306 and will carry through Robert's death in 1329.

Katherine Kurtz and Deborah Turner Harris wrote a fantasy fiction series(''The Temple and the Stone'' and ''The Temple and the Crown'') linking Robert the Bruce with the Knights Templar.

The German power metal band Grave Digger included a song called "The Bruce" on their 1996 album ''Tunes of War'', a concept album about the Scottish struggles for independence from England.

The third volume of Jack Whyte's Templar Trilogy, "Order in Chaos", is largely set in Scotland during the rise of The Bruce. It winds up its story just after the battle at Bannockburn. It covers a lot of the challenges and politics of that era.

In Nellie Bly's Ten Days in a Mad-House she references the Bruce's night of watching the spider and her own attempts in staying awake.

In the 1948 live-action Disney movie "So Dear to My Heart", a cartoon sequence portrays Robert the Bruce's legendary encounter with the determined spider, as well as his subsequent victory. The sequence animates part of a song called 'stick-to-it-ivity' which is sung to teach the main character about the importance of perseverance in the face of adversity.

The names "Robert the Bruce" and "Mad Anthony Wayne" are the inspiration for "Bruce Wayne", the name for the civilian identity of DC Comics superhero Batman.

The 1996 film ''The Bruce'', Robert the Bruce was portrayed by Sandy Welch.

The book In Freedom's Cause was written by G. A. Henty. Robert the Bruce is the Scottish king. It is a good Scottish fiction book, also telling about William Wallace and other Scottish heroes.

Romance writer Monica McCarty wrote a series of books (called Highland Guard Novels) about Robert the Bruce's legendary secret Islemen guard and Bruce's guerrilla warfare tactics. Though Bruce is a minor Character his battles and the events surrounding his war against England are catalogued.

In George MacDonald's 1865 novel ''Alec Forbes of Howglen'', the character Annie Anderson is raised by her stingy relative Robert Bruce. Though he is no relation to this great figure of Scottish history, MacDonald's Robert Bruce constantly refers to the story of "his ancestor and the spider," even when it is totally irrelevant to the conversation at the moment.

Notes

References

. . . . . . , with copious original source materiéls. . . . . .

Geoffrey the Baker's: Chronicon Galfridi le Baker de Swynebroke, ed. Edward Maunde Thompson (Oxford, 1889).

External links

Account of Robert Bruce & Battle of Bannockburn

John Barbour: ''The Brus''

Robert the Bruce at Findagrave.com

Robert the Bruce Heritage Centre

|- |-

Category:1274 births Category:1329 deaths Category:Scottish monarchs Category:Roman Catholic monarchs Category:Guardians of Scotland Category:House of Bruce Category:Medieval Gaels Category:Earls or mormaers of Carrick Category:Scottish folklore Category:People of the Wars of Scottish Independence Category:People illustrated on sterling banknotes Category:Burials at Dunfermline Abbey Category:People excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church

ar:روبرت الأول من إسكتلندا bg:Робърт I (Шотландия) ca:Robert I d'Escòcia cs:Robert I. Skotský cy:Robert I, brenin yr Alban da:Robert 1. af Skotland de:Robert I. (Schottland) el:Ροβέρτος Α' της Σκωτίας es:Roberto I de Escocia eo:Roberto Bruso eu:Roberto I.a Eskoziakoa fa:رابرت یکم اسکاتلند fr:Robert Ier d'Écosse fy:Robert I fan Skotlân ga:Roibeard I, Rí na nAlbanach gd:Raibeart I na h-Alba gl:Roberto I de Escocia ko:로버트 1세 it:Roberto I di Scozia he:רוברט הראשון, מלך סקוטלנד la:Robertus I (rex Scotiae) hu:I. Róbert skót király nl:Robert I van Schotland ja:ロバート1世 (スコットランド王) no:Robert I av Skottland pl:Robert I Bruce pt:Roberto I da Escócia ru:Роберт I (король Шотландии) sco:Robert the Bruce simple:Robert I of Scotland sk:Róbert I. (Škótsko) sl:Robert Bruce sr:Роберт Брус fi:Robert Bruce sv:Robert I av Skottland tr:I. Robert uk:Роберт I Брюс ur:رابرٹ بروس zh:罗伯特·布鲁斯

Coordinates	54°59′″N73°22′″N
name	Sharon L. Lechter
birth date	January 12, 1954
occupation	Investor, CPA, Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur
education	Accounting from Florida State University with Magna Cum Laude honors
spouse	Michael Lechter
children	Phillip, Shelly & Rick
residence	America
relations	}}

Sharon L. Lechter (born January 12, 1954) is a CPA, author, businesswoman, investor, educator, international speaker and philanthropist. Lechter is best known as the co-author of the international best-selling book ''Rich Dad, Poor Dad'' and the Rich Dad series of books as well as one of the founders of the Rich Dad companies. In addition, Lechter is the co-inventor of the Cashflow for Kids board game and propelled the launch and development of a Web site designed to teach children financial literacy through fun, educational and interactive games. On October 6, 2009, Lechter's newest book, ''Think and Grow Rich: Three Feet from Gold'' hits book stands nationwide.

''Rich Dad, Poor Dad'' was originally self-published in April 1997 by Tech Press, Inc. and later bought and published by Warner Books. The book first hit the bestseller lists in March 1998 and has since sold over 26 million copies worldwide, been published in 47 different languages and sold in 97 countries.

In January, 2008 Lechter was appointed to the President's Advisory Council on Financial Literacy to serve a two-year term. It is the council's responsibility to keep the American public financially competent and competitive.

Personal life

Sharon L. Lechter is the co-author of the #1 NY Times best-sellers ''Rich Dad, Poor Dad'' and the Rich Dad series of books. In 2008, Lechter was appointed to the President's Advisory Council on Financial Literacy. She is the Founder and CEO of Pay Your Family First and YOUTHpreneur.

Sharon Lechter graduated from Florida State University with an Accounting degree and Magna Cum Laude honors. Shortly after, she began her career in the ranks of a Big Eight accounting firm. Before she and her husband Michael met Robert Kiyosaki and formed the Rich Dad companies, Sharon held various management positions with computer, insurance and publishing companies while maintaining her credentials as a professional CPA. Sharon met her husband Michael Lechter in 1980.

After co-founding the Rich Dad companies, Lechter spent 11 years on the managerial board. In June 2007, Lechter resigned from the managerial board of the Rich Dad companies to further pursue her passion with children's education and financial literacy.

''"Our current educational system has not been able to keep pace with the global and technological changes in the world today," Lechter said. "Money is a life skill. We must teach our young people the skills - both scholastic and financial - that they need to not only survive, but to thrive in the world."''

Today, she is actively engaged in several business ventures, curriculum, councils and media opportunities to advance financial literacy across the nation.

Michael Lechter

Micahel A. Lechter is an intellectual property lawyer, President and CEO of Tech Press, author, investor and entrepreneur. Michael has been practicing law as a patent attorney since the early 1970s. Among his other duties, Michael is an adjunct professor at Arizona State University, counsel to the international law firm of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, LLP and former Rich Dad Advisor.

He is the author of several books including ''Protecting Your #1 Asset, Creating Fortunes from Your Ideas, An Intellectual Property Handbook'', ''OPM: How to Attract Other People's Money for Your Investments - The Ultimate Leverage'', editor of ''Successful Patents and Patenting for Engineers and Scientists'' and contributing author to the ''Encyclopedia of Electrical and Electronics Engineering and Licensing Best Practices: The LESI Guide To Strategic Issues and Contemporary Realities''.

Michael maintains a column at Inc.com where he gives practical advice on a variety of different topics from protecting your assets to intellectual property.

Children

Sharon and Michael have three children together, Phillip, Shelly and William, and reside in Arizona. Sharon and Michael's youngest son, William, joined the U.S. Marines in the summer of 2007. Phillip Lechter and his business partner Troy own Community First Financial, a mortgage brokering company in Scottsdale, Ariz. In addition to his mortgage company, Phillip is also a real estate investor and educator with an investment portfolio that includes 11 residential rental units and a retail business. In the fall of 2000, Phillip began working as an “apprentice” to his mom which later developed into his position as the Chief Communications Officer for the Rich Dad Company. Recently Phillip Lechter has become an Instructor at Nouveau Riche University teaching a class on Negotiations for Real Estate.

Cherry Creek Lodge

The Lechters own a dude ranch in Young, Ariz. that they are developing into a high-end hunting lodge and corporate group retreat. Cherry Creek Lodge sits amidst the pristine hills and trees of the Tonto National Forest and offers a variety of activities to guests including hunting, fishing, archery, horse-back riding and ATV rentals. Cherry Creek Lodge started hosting guests in early 2008.

Pay Your Family First

In 2009 Lechter officially launched Pay Your Family First, "a company dedicated to empowering children and families to build prosperous futures through financial literacy education." The company is the umbrella organization for a number of Lechter's newest brands and products including YOUTHpreneur and ThriveTime for Teens.

YOUTHpreneur

YOUTHpreneur launched in 2008 to "ignite the entrepreneurs of tomorrow, today!" YOUTHpreneur is a brand of products and services under the Pay Your Family First company. The brand features a business kit designed to teach teenagers the basics of money management and how to operate an independent business. "My Biz Kit" includes both parent and teenage guides, a resource guide, a tote bag, calculator, stationary, business cards and more. YOUTHpreneur also sells a branded gumball machine designed to be used as a "starter business" for those not looking to go out and create their own. In addition, the brand offers a SMS text messaging service called TAPS - Tips, Affirmations, and Positive Sayings. Subscribers receive two weekly text messages to their mobile phones with positive or informative sayings, and parents receive one weekly email on how to talk to their children about money.

ThriveTime for Teens

ThriveTime for Teens is a board game under the Pay Your Family First company. The game is designed to teach teenage children financial skills by placing them in real life money and life decisions such as buying a car, giving to charity, using credit cards, buying or starting a business and more. Players have 15 game-time hours per game week of "BIZtime" in which they must decide what new activities or part-time work they will engage in. Players advance through the game with "Thrive Score." Thrive Score increases by making financially good decisions and decreases with bad ones. Players receive game sheets with income, expenditures, assets and liabilities to total their progress.

Three Feet from Gold

On October 6, 2009, Lechter's newest title, ''Think and Grow Rich: Three Feet from Gold'' hits book stands nationwide. The narrative follows the story of a young writer who interviews many of today's business leaders and other influential figures about the importance of persistence in obtaining your goals. The book advocates finding your own Success Formula, choosing good counsel and above all: never giving up.

The Rich Dad Companies

Sharon Lechter has co-authored over a dozen different books under the Rich Dad brand with Robert Kiyosaki and coordinated or edited another 10 with the Rich Dad companies. She is one of three founding partners of the series of companies that fall under the Rich Dad brand with Robert Kiyosaki and Kim Kiyosaki. Robert Kiyosaki once said of Sharon Lechter that,

''“Sharon is one of the few natural entrepreneurs I have ever met. In The Rich Dad Company, I am the horn and Sharon is the engine."''

At the Rich Dad companies Sharon claimed credit for developing several board games, audio cassettes, seminars, CDs and interactive Web sites. She claims to be the co-inventor of the Cashflow for Kids board game and spearheaded the launch of Rich Dad's interactive Web site for kids. However, the companies' most well-known work is their very first book and the #1 ''New York Times'' bestseller ''Rich Dad, Poor Dad''.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad

;''Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money—That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! (2000)''

Originally self-published by Tech Press, Inc. before being picked up by Warner Books and becoming a bestseller, the story line follows anecdotal advice and lessons Robert Kiyosaki learned from his "two fathers" growing up in Hawaii. Robert's "rich dad" (his best friend's father) and his "poor dad" (his biological father) offer very different advice on how to live his life and earn a living. The anecdotal comparison of his "rich dad" and "poor dad" provide the basis for the book and later brand. His "poor dad" was the superintendent of the Hawaii State Department of Education and a well-educated man. However, Kiyosaki demonstrates that because he followed the traditional path of "get a good education to get a good job" he was constantly in debt later in life and had very little real net worth. In opposition to this is his "rich dad" who never even finished the 8th grade but became "the richest man in Hawaii" by investing his smaller income in a few good money producing investments. ''Rich Dad, Poor Dad'' is designed to challenge the way in which most people view money and how to make money work for you, instead of working for your money.

The rest of the Rich Dad books enforce these basic principles and ideas but elaborate on them within specific groups, time frames or opportunities.

Rich Dad Series

Warner Bros./Hachette Publishing - ''Sharon Lechter as co-author with Robert Kiyosaki''

Rich Dad, Poor Dad (1997)

Rich Dad’s CASHFLOW Quadrant (1998)

Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing (2000)

Rich Dad’s Rich Kid Smart Kid (2001)

Rich Dad’s Retire Young Retire Rich (2001)

Rich Dad’s Prophecy (2002)

Rich Dad’s Success Stories (2003)

Rich Dad’s Guide to Becoming Rich Without Cutting Up Your Credit Cards (2003)

Rich Dad’s Who Took My Money (2004)

Rich Dad’s Before You Quit Your Job (2005)

''Sharon Lechter as author with co-author Garrett Sutton''

Rich Dad’s Real Estate Advantages (2006)

Little Brown/Hachette Publishing - ''Sharon Lechter as co-author with Robert Kiyosaki''

Rich Dad Poor Dad for Teens (2004)

Escape the Rat Race (2005)

VideoPlus - ''Sharon Lechter as co-author with Robert Kiyosaki''

The Business School For People Who Like Helping People (2001)

Rich Publishing - ''Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki with Sharon Lechter and Meredith McIver as co-authors''

Why We Want You to be Rich (2006)

Rich Woman (2006) - ''Kim Kiyosaki''

Rich Dad Advisor Series

Warner Bros./Hachette

Sales Dogs (2001)

Own Your Own Corporation (2001)

Protecting Your #1 Asset (2001)

How to Buy and Sell a Business (2003)

OPM – Other People’s Money (2004)

The ABC’s of Real Estate Investing (2004)

The ABC’s of Getting Out of Debt (2004)

The ABC’s of Writing Winning Business Plans (2005)

The ABC’s of Building a Business Team That Wins (2006)

Cashflow for Kids

Lechter takes credit for adapting Rich Dad's Cashflow 101 board game for children. Cashflow for Kids, designed for children ages 5 to 9, aims to teach the very basic principles and concepts of investing and making money.

The game is broken into two stages, the "rat race" and "the fast track." Kids must first raise their income above their expenses before they can escape the first stage of the game. In the second stage they must achieve the "dream" goal of $50,000 in monthly cash flow with the first to reach this goal declared the winner.

Kids learn hands on and by themselves how to invest and the difference between an asset and a liability. In place of "score cards" there are financial statements. Kids can see first hand what their money is going into.

Rich Kid, Smart Kid

Rich Kid Smart Kid is the online, animated version of Cashflow for Kids. Lechter was a driving force behind developing the concepts for the site. The same principles and lessons found in the board game are applied at this free online Web site. Animated characters help kids "escape the rat race" and learn how to maximize profit in several different and repeatable exercises.

The Web site caters to children of all ages with four different areas for four different age groups; K-2, 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12. In addition there is a section and breakdown for teachers and parents as well as news of personal kid success stories.

Lawsuit

On October 12, 2007, Sharon Lechter filed suit against ''Rich Dad, Poor Dad'' co-author Robert Kiyosaki in Clark County, NV (Civil Case # 07-A-549886-C). On September 4, 2008 the Lechters and Kiyosakis reached a settlement in their law suit.

The Rich Dad Philosophy

The main goal of Kiyosaki's anecdotal lessons in the Rich Dad series of books is to create financially literate and aware persons who can support themselves on their investments alone, rather than running the "rat race" and living paycheck to paycheck. To do this they advocate investments such as real estate and small businesses. They clearly define the difference between an asset and a liability. Kiyosaki defines "assets" as things that generate money, such as rental properties or businesses and "liabilities" as things that cost money, such as house payments, cars and so on. Financial leverage is also a key component towards becoming rich. Lechter advocates learning to take existing infrastructures and systems and applying them to your project.

Lechter stresses what she calls "financial literacy" as the means to obtaining wealth. She says that life skills are often best learned through experience and that there are important lessons not taught in school. According to Lechter, in order to obtain financial freedom, one must be either be a business owner or an investor, generating passive income.

Lechter and Kiyosaki speak often of what they call "The Cashflow Quadrant," a conceptual tool that aims to describe how all the money in the world is earned. Depicted in a diagram, this concept entails four groupings, split with two lines (one vertical and one horizontal). In each of the four groups there is a letter representing a way in which an individual may earn income. The letters are as follows.

E: Employee — Working for someone else

S: Self-employed or Small business owner — Where a person owns his own job and is his own boss.

B: Business owner — Where a person owns a "system" of making money, rather than a job to make money.

I: Investor — Spending money in order to receive a larger payout in return.

For those on the left side of the divide ("E" and "S"), Lechter and Kiyosaki say that they may never obtain true wealth. Conversely, those on the right side of the divide ("B" and "I") are supposedly following the only road to true wealth.

Financial Literacy

Sharon Lechter's true passion is financial literacy, especially for woman in business, children and families. During her time at the Rich Dad companies she worked to advance and develop a variety of media for children and teens including; Rich Dad, Poor Dad for ''Teens'', Rich Kid Smart Kid Web site and the board game Cashflow for Kids.

In January, 2008, Sharon Lechter was appointed to the President’s Council on Financial Literacy in a ceremony held in the Roosevelt room at the White House in Washington, D.C.

Lechter and the council, composed of 19 members from the business, faith and non-profit communities work to shape the course for a financially literate nation. The council is charged to gather information about financial literacy and its condition in the U.S., recommend improvements to national policies to the President and the Treasury secretary and "assist the American people in understanding and addressing financial matters."

''“We want people to own assets; we want people to be able to manage their assets,” said President Bush in his remarks. “We want people to understand basic financial concepts, and how credit cards work and how credit scores affect you, how you can benefit from a savings account or a bank account. That's what we want. And this group of citizens has taken the lead, and I thank them.”''

Members of the council include;

Charles R. Schwab, of California, and upon appointment, Designate Chair;

John Bryant, of California, and upon appointment, Designate Vice Chair;

Theodore Beck, of Colorado;

Theodore R. Daniels, of Maryland;

Cutler Dawson, of Virginia;

Robert F. Duvall, of New York;

Tahira Hira, of Iowa;

Jack E. Kosakowski, of Colorado;

Sharon L. Lechter, of Arizona;

Robert V. Lee III, of Florida;

Laura Levine, of the District of Columbia;

Community Awards & Recognitions

A committed philanthropist, Lechter also gives back to world communities as both a volunteer and benefactor. Her dedication to her principles, ideas and convictions has landed her numerous awards and placed her on several committees.

Committees

President George W. Bush's Council on Financial Literacy

The Dean’s Council 100 of the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University

Advisory board of the Spirit of Enterprise at the W.P. Carey School of Business

Active member of Women’s Presidents Organization

National board of Childhelp, a national non-profit organization founded to prevent and treat child abuse.

Recognitions

''Spirit of the Children Award (2002)'' - Sharon and her husband Michael received this award for their support of Childhelp and their own efforts to curtail child abuse.

''Arizona Power Couple (2004)'' - Sharon and Michael were recognized as an Arizona Power Couple for their influence in and around the state.

''Woman of Distinction (2005)'' - The Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America recognized Sharon with this award.

References

External links

Pay Your Family First Official Web site

Sharon Lechter's Official Web site

Michael Lechter's Official Web site

Phillip Lechter's Official Web site

YOUTHpreneur Official Web site

Community First Financial

Rich Dad, Poor Dad's Official Web site

Kurt Schemers of Traders Nation Interview of Sharon Lechter

Kurt Schemers of Traders Nation Interview of Michael A. Lechter

Sharon Lechter radio interview WSLR with Doug Miles

Category:American non-fiction writers Category:1954 births Category:Living people Category:American business writers Category:American businesspeople Category:American finance and investment writers Category:American motivational writers Category:Florida State University alumni

zh:莎朗·L·萊希特

Coordinates	54°59′″N73°22′″N
Name	Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell
Birth place	Paddington, London, England
Death place	Nyeri, Kenya
Nickname	B-P
Branch	British Army
Serviceyears	1876–1910
Rank	Lieutenant-General
Commands	Chief of Staff, Second Matabele War (1896–1897)5th Dragoon Guards in India (1897)Inspector General of Cavalry, England (1903)
Battles	Anglo-Ashanti Wars, Second Matabele War, Siege of Mafeking, Second Boer War
Awards	Ashanti Star (1895),Matabele Campaign, British South Africa Company Medal (1896),Queen's South Africa Medal (1899), King's South Africa Medal ( 1902),Boy Scouts Silver WolfBoy Scouts Silver Buffalo Award (1926),World Scout Committee Bronze Wolf (1935),Großes Dankabzeichen des ÖPB (1927)Großes Ehrenzeichen der Republik am Bande (1931)Goldene Gemse (1931) Grand-Cross in the Order of Orange-Nassau (1932),Order of Merit (1937),Wateler Peace Prize (1937)Order of St Michael and St George,Royal Victorian Order,Order of the Bath
Laterwork	Founder of the international Scouting Movement; writer; artist
Signature	Baden-Powell_signature.svg }}

Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, OM, GCMG, GCVO, KCB (; 22 February 1857 – 8 January 1941), also known as B-P or Lord Baden-Powell, was a lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, and founder of the Scout Movement.

After having been educated at Charterhouse School, Baden-Powell served in the British Army from 1876 until 1910 in India and Africa. In 1899, during the Second Boer War in South Africa, Baden-Powell successfully defended the town in the Siege of Mafeking. Several of his military books, written for military reconnaissance and scout training in his African years, were also read by boys. Based on those earlier books, he wrote ''Scouting for Boys'', published in 1908 by Pearson, for youth readership. During writing, he tested his ideas through a camping trip on Brownsea Island with the local Boys' Brigade and sons of his friends that began on 1 August 1907, which is now seen as the beginning of Scouting.

After his marriage to Olave St Clair Soames, Baden-Powell, his sister Agnes Baden-Powell and notably his wife actively gave guidance to the Scouting Movement and the Girl Guides Movement. Baden-Powell lived his last years in Nyeri, Kenya, where he died and was buried in 1941.

Early life

Baden-Powell was born as Robert Stephenson Smyth Powell, or more familiarly as Stephe Powell, at 6 Stanhope Street (now 11 Stanhope Terrace), Paddington in London, on 22 February 1857. He was named for his godfather, Robert Stephenson, the railway and civil engineer; his third name was his mother's maiden name. His father Reverend Baden Powell, a Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford University, already had four teenage children from the second of his two previous marriages. On 10 March 1846 at St Luke's Church, Chelsea, Reverend Powell married Henrietta Grace Smyth (3 September 1824 – 13 October 1914), eldest daughter of Admiral William Henry Smyth and 28 years his junior. Quickly they had Warington (early 1847), George (late 1847), Augustus (1849) and Francis (1850). After three further children who died when very young, they had Stephe, Agnes (1858) and Baden (1860). The three youngest children and the often ill Augustus were close friends. Reverend Powell died when Stephe was three, and as tribute to his father and to set her own children apart from their half-siblings and cousins, the mother changed the family name to ''Baden-Powell''. Subsequently, Stephe was raised by his mother, a strong woman who was determined that her children would succeed. Baden-Powell would say of her in 1933 "The whole secret of my getting on, lay with my mother."

After attending Rose Hill School, Tunbridge Wells, during which his favourite brother Augustus died, Stephe Baden-Powell was awarded a scholarship to Charterhouse, a prestigious public school. His first introduction to Scouting skills was through stalking and cooking game while avoiding teachers in the nearby woods, which were strictly out-of-bounds. He also played the piano and violin, was an ambidextrous artist, and enjoyed acting. Holidays were spent on yachting or canoeing expeditions with his brothers.

Military career

In 1876, R.S.S. Baden-Powell, as he styled himself then, joined the 13th Hussars in India with the rank of lieutenant. He enhanced and honed his military scouting skills amidst the Zulu in the early 1880s in the Natal province of South Africa, where his regiment had been posted, and where he was Mentioned in Despatches. During one of his travels, he came across a large string of wooden beads, worn by the Zulu king Dinizulu, which was later incorporated into the Wood Badge training programme he started after he founded the Scouting Movement. Baden-Powell's skills impressed his superiors and he was Brevetted Major as Military Secretary and senior Aide-de-camp of the Commander-in-Chief and Governor of Malta, his uncle General Sir Henry Augustus Smyth. He was posted in Malta for three years, also working as intelligence officer for the Mediterranean for the Director of Military Intelligence. He frequently travelled disguised as a butterfly collector, incorporating plans of military installations into his drawings of butterfly wings.

Baden-Powell returned to Africa in 1896 to aid the British South Africa Company colonials under siege in Bulawayo during the Second Matabele War. This was a formative experience for him not only because he had the time of his life commanding reconnaissance missions into enemy territory in Matobo Hills, but because many of his later Boy Scout ideas took hold here. It was during this campaign that he first met and befriended the American scout Frederick Russell Burnham, who introduced Baden-Powell to the American Old West and ''woodcraft'' (i.e., scoutcraft), and here that he wore his signature Stetson campaign hat and kerchief for the first time. After Rhodesia, Baden-Powell took part in a successful British invasion of Ashanti, West Africa in the Fourth Ashanti War, and at the age of 40 was promoted to lead the 5th Dragoon Guards in 1897 in India. A few years later he wrote a small manual, entitled ''Aids to Scouting,'' a summary of lectures he had given on the subject of military scouting, to help train recruits. Using this and other methods he was able to train them to think independently, use their initiative, and survive in the wilderness.

Baden-Powell was accused of illegally executing a prisoner of war, Matabele chief Uwini, in 1896, who had been promised his life would be spared if he surrendered. Uwini was shot by firing squad under Baden-Powell's instructions. Baden-Powell was cleared by an inquiry, and later claimed he was "released without a stain on my character".

Baden-Powell returned to South Africa prior to the Second Boer War and was engaged in further military actions against the Zulus. By this time, he had been promoted to be the youngest colonel in the British Army. He was responsible for the organisation of a force of Legion of Frontiersmen to assist the regular army. While arranging this, he was trapped in the Siege of Mafeking, and surrounded by a Boer army, at times in excess of 8,000 men. Although wholly outnumbered, the garrison withstood the siege for 217 days. Much of this is attributable to cunning military deceptions instituted at Baden-Powell's behest as commander of the garrison. Fake minefields were planted and his soldiers were ordered to simulate avoiding non-existent barbed wire while moving between trenches. Baden-Powell did most of the reconnaissance work himself. In one instance noting that the Boers had not removed the rail line, Baden-Powell loaded an armoured locomotive with sharpshooters and successfully sent it down the rails into the heart of the Boer encampment and back again in a strategic attempt to decapitate the Boer leadership.

Contrary views of Baden-Powell's actions during the Siege of Mafeking pointed out that his success in resisting the Boers was secured at the expense of the lives of the native African soldiers and civilians, including members of his own African garrison. Pakenham stated that Baden-Powell drastically reduced the rations to the natives' garrison. However, in 2001, after subsequent research, Pakenham decidedly retreated from this position.

During the siege, a cadet corps, consisting of white boys below fighting age, was used to stand guard, carry messages, assist in hospitals and so on, freeing the men for military service. Although Baden-Powell did not form this cadet corps himself, and there is no evidence that he took much notice of them during the Siege, he was sufficiently impressed with both their courage and the equanimity with which they performed their tasks to use them later as an object lesson in the first chapter of ''Scouting for Boys''. The siege was lifted in the Relief of Mafeking on 16 May 1900. Promoted to major-general, Baden-Powell became a national hero. After organising the South African Constabulary, the national police force, he returned to England to take up a post as Inspector General of Cavalry in 1903. In 1907 he was appointed to command a division in the newly-formed Territorial Force.

In 1910 Lieutenant-General Baden-Powell decided to retire from the Army reputedly on the advice of King Edward VII, who suggested that he could better serve his country by promoting Scouting.

On the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Baden-Powell put himself at the disposal of the War Office. No command was given him, for, as Lord Kitchener said: "he could lay his hand on several competent divisional generals but could find no one who could carry on the invaluable work of the Boy Scouts." It was widely rumoured that Baden-Powell was engaged in spying, and intelligence officers took great care to inculcate the myth.

Scouting movement

On his return from Africa in 1903, Baden-Powell found that his military training manual, ''Aids to Scouting'', had become a best-seller, and was being used by teachers and youth organisations. Following his involvement in the Boys' Brigade as Brigade Secretary and Officer in charge of its scouting section, with encouragement from his friend, William Alexander Smith, Baden-Powell decided to re-write ''Aids to Scouting'' to suit a youth readership. In August 1907 he held a camp on Brownsea Island for twenty-two boys from local Boys Brigade companies and sons of friends of Baden-Powell's from public schools Eton and Harrow to test out the applicability of his ideas. Baden-Powell was also influenced by Ernest Thompson Seton, who founded the Woodcraft Indians. Seton gave Baden-Powell a copy of his book ''The Birch Bark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians'' and they met in 1906. The first book on the Scout Movement, Baden-Powell's ''Scouting for Boys'' was published in six instalments in 1908, and has sold approximately 150 million copies as the fourth best-selling book of the 20th century.

Boys and girls spontaneously formed Scout troops and the Scouting Movement had inadvertently started, first as a national, and soon an international obsession. The Scouting Movement was to grow up in friendly parallel relations with the Boys' Brigade. A rally for all Scouts was held at Crystal Palace in London in 1909, at which Baden-Powell discovered the first Girl Scouts. The Girl Guide Movement was subsequently founded in 1910 under the auspices of Baden-Powell's sister, Agnes Baden-Powell. Baden-Powell's friend, Juliette Gordon Low, was encouraged by him to bring the Movement to America, where she founded the Girl Scouts of the USA.

In 1920, the 1st World Scout Jamboree took place in Olympia, and Baden-Powell was acclaimed Chief Scout of the World. Baden-Powell was created a Baronet in the 1921 New Year Honours and Baron Baden-Powell, of Gilwell, in the County of Essex, on 17 September 1929, Gilwell Park being the International Scout Leader training centre. After receiving this honour, Baden-Powell mostly styled himself "Baden-Powell of Gilwell".

In 1929, during the 3rd World Scout Jamboree, he received as a present a new 20 horse power Rolls-Royce car (chassis number GVO-40, registration OU 2938) and an Eccles Caravan. This combination well served the Baden-Powells in their further travels around Europe. The caravan was nicknamed Eccles and is now on display at Gilwell Park. The car, nicknamed Jam Roll, was sold after his death by Olave Baden-Powell in 1945. Jam Roll and Eccles were reunited at Gilwell for the 21st World Scout Jamboree in 2007. Recently it has been purchased on behalf of Scouting and is owned by a charity, B-P Jam Roll Ltd. Funds are being raised to repay the loan that was used to purchase the car. Baden-Powell also had a positive impact on improvements in youth education. Under his dedicated command the world Scouting Movement grew. By 1922 there were more than a million Scouts in 32 countries; by 1939 the number of Scouts was in excess of 3.3 million.

At the 5th World Scout Jamboree in 1937, Baden-Powell gave his farewell to Scouting, and retired from public Scouting life. 22 February, the joint birthday of Robert and Olave Baden-Powell, continues to be marked as Founder's Day by Scouts and Thinking Day by Guides to remember and celebrate the work of the Chief Scout and Chief Guide of the World.

In his final letter to the Scouts, Baden-Powell wrote:

...I have had a most happy life and I want each one of you to have a happy life too. I believe that God put us in this jolly world to be happy and enjoy life. Happiness does not come from being rich, nor merely being successful in your career, nor by self-indulgence. One step towards happiness is to make yourself healthy and strong while you are a boy, so that you can be useful and so you can enjoy life when you are a man. Nature study will show you how full of beautiful and wonderful things God has made the world for you to enjoy. Be contented with what you have got and make the best of it. Look on the bright side of things instead of the gloomy one. But the real way to get happiness is by giving out happiness to other people. Try and leave this world a little better than you found it and when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate you have not wasted your time but have done your best. 'Be Prepared' in this way, to live happy and to die happy — stick to your Scout Promise always — even after you have ceased to be a boy — and God help you to do it.

Personal life

In January 1912, Baden-Powell met Olave St Clair Soames, on the ocean liner, ''Arcadian'', heading for New York to start one of his Scouting World Tours. She was 23, while he was 55; they shared the same birthday, 22 February. They became engaged in September of the same year, causing a media sensation due to Baden-Powell's fame. To avoid press intrusion, they married in secret on 31 October 1912, at St Peter's Church in Parkstone. The Scouts of England each donated a penny to buy Baden-Powell a wedding gift, a car (note that this is not the Rolls-Royce they were presented with in 1929). There is a monument to their marriage inside St Mary's Church, Brownsea Island.

Baden-Powell and Olave lived in Pax Hill near Bentley, Hampshire from about 1919 until 1939. The Bentley house was a gift of her father. Directly after he had married, Baden-Powell began to suffer persistent headaches, which were considered by his doctor to be of psychosomatic origin and treated with dream analysis. The headaches disappeared upon his moving into a makeshift bedroom set up on his balcony. The Baden-Powells had three children, one son and two daughters, who all acquired the courtesy title of "The Honourable" in 1929 as children of a baron. The son succeeded his father in 1941 to the Baden-Powell barony and the title of Baron Baden-Powell.

Arthur Robert Peter (Peter), later 2nd Baron Baden-Powell (1913–1962). He married Carine Crause-Boardman in 1936, and had three children: Robert Crause, later 3rd Baron Baden-Powell; David Michael (Michael), current heir to the titles, and Wendy.

Heather (1915–1986), who married John King and had two children: Michael, who died in the sinking of SS Heraklion, and Timothy;

Betty (1917–2004), who married Gervas Charles Robert Clay in 1936 and had a daughter: Gillian, and three sons: Robin, Nigel and Crispin.

In addition, when Olave's sister Auriol Davidson née Soames died in 1919, Olave and Robert took her three nieces, Christian (1912–1975), Clare (1913–1980), and Yvonne, (1918–1995?), into their family and brought them up as their own children. In 1939, he and his wife moved to a cottage he had commissioned in Nyeri, Kenya, near Mount Kenya, where he had previously been to recuperate. The small one-room house, which he named ''Paxtu'', was located on the grounds of the Outspan Hotel, owned by Eric Sherbrooke Walker, Baden-Powell's first private secretary and one of the first Scout inspectors. Walker also owned the Treetops Hotel, approx 17 km out in the Aberdare Mountains, often visited by Baden-Powell and people of the Happy Valley set. The Paxtu cottage is integrated into the Outspan Hotel buildings and serves as a small Scouting museum.

Baden-Powell died on 8 January 1941 and is buried in Nyeri, in St. Peter's Cemetery His gravestone bears a circle with a dot in the centre, which is the trail sign for "Going home", or "I have gone home": When his wife Olave died, her ashes were sent to Kenya and interred beside her husband. Kenya has declared Baden-Powell's grave a national monument.

Personal beliefs

Tim Jeal, who wrote the biography ''Baden-Powell'', argues that Baden-Powell's distrust of communism led to his implicit support, through naïveté, of fascism. In 1939 Baden-Powell noted in his diary: "Lay up all day. Read ''Mein Kampf''. A wonderful book, with good ideas on education, health, propaganda, organisation etc. – and ideals which Hitler does not practise himself." Baden-Powell admired Benito Mussolini early in the Italian fascist leader's career.

Some very early Scouting "Thanks" badges had a swastika symbol on them. According to biographer Michael Rosenthal, Baden-Powell used the swastika because he was a Nazi sympathiser. Jeal, however, argues that Baden-Powell was naïve of the symbol's growing association with fascism and maintained that his use of the symbol related to its earlier, original meaning of "good luck" in Sanskrit, for which purpose the symbol had been used for centuries prior to the rise of fascism. In conflict with the idea that Powell was a Nazi supporter is the fact that Baden-Powell was a target of the Nazi regime in the Black Book, which listed individuals who were to be arrested during and after an invasion of Great Britain as part of Operation Sea Lion. Scouting was regarded as a dangerous spy organisation by the Nazis. Baden-Powell used the swastika as a "Thanks" badge for the Scout Movement well before Hitler used it, and when Hitler did start to use it, Baden-Powell ceased to use it. Previously, the swastika had been used by Rudyard Kipling as a logo on his books.

Artist and writer

Baden-Powell made paintings and drawings almost every day of his life. Most have a humorous or informative character. He published books and other texts during his years of military service both to finance his life and to educate his men.

Baden-Powell was regarded as an excellent storyteller. During his whole life he told 'ripping yarns' to audiences. After having published ''Scouting for Boys'', Baden-Powell kept on writing more handbooks and educative materials for all Scouts, as well as directives for Scout Leaders. In his later years, he also wrote about the Scout Movement and his ideas for its future. He spent the last decade of his life in Africa, and many of his later books had African themes. Currently, many pages of his field diary, complete with drawings, are on display at the National Scouting Museum in Irving, Texas.

Sexuality

Early discussion of Baden-Powell's sexuality focused on his relationship with his close friend Kenneth McLaren. Tim Jeal's later biography discusses the relationship and concludes that there is no conclusive evidence that this friendship was physical. Jeal then examines Baden-Powell's views on women, his appreciation of the male form, his military relationships and his marriage, indicating that Baden-Powell could be a repressed homosexual. Jeal's conclusion is shared by some biographers and disputed by others, but not yet examined in any detail by scholars.

Works

;Military books

1884: ''Reconnaissance and Scouting''

1885: ''Cavalry Instruction''

1889: ''Pigsticking or Hoghunting''

1896: ''The Downfall of Prempeh''

1897: ''The Matabele Campaign''

1899: ''Aids to Scouting for N.-C.Os and Men''

1900: ''Sport in War''

1901: ''Notes and Instructions for the South African Constabulary''

1914: ''Quick Training for War''

;Scouting books

1908: ''Scouting for Boys''

1909: ''Yarns for Boy Scouts''

1912: ''The Handbook for the Girl Guides or How Girls Can Help to Build Up the Empire'' (co-authored with Agnes Baden-Powell)

1913: ''Boy Scouts Beyond The Sea: My World Tour''

1916: ''The Wolf Cub's handbook''

1918: ''Girl Guiding''

1919: ''Aids To Scoutmastership''

1921: ''What Scouts Can Do: More Yarns''

1922: ''Rovering to Success''

1929: ''Scouting and Youth Movements''

est 1929: ''Last Message to Scouts''

1935: ''Scouting Round the World''

;Other books

1905: ''Ambidexterity'' (co-authored with John Jackson)

1915: ''Indian Memories''

1915: ''My Adventures as a Spy'' 1916: ''Young Knights of the Empire: Their Code, and Further Scout Yarns''

1921: ''An Old Wolf's Favourites''

1927: ''Life's Snags and How to Meet Them''

1933: ''Lessons From the Varsity of Life''

1934: ''Adventures and Accidents''

1936: ''Adventuring to Manhood''

1937: ''African Adventures''

1938: ''Birds and beasts of Africa''

1939: ''Paddle Your Own Canoe''

1940: ''More Sketches Of Kenya''

;Sculpture 1905 ''John Smith''

Awards

In 1937 Baden-Powell was appointed to the Order of Merit, one of the most exclusive awards in the British honours system, and he was also awarded 28 decorations by foreign states, including the Grand Officer of the Portuguese Order of Christ, the Grand Commander of the Greek Order of the Redeemer (1920), the Commander of the French Légion d'honneur (1925), the First Class of the Hungarian Order of Merit (1929), the Grand Cross of the Order of the Dannebrog of Denmark, the Grand Cross of the Order of the White Lion, the Grand Cross of the Order of the Phoenix, and the Order of Polonia Restituta.

The Silver Wolf Award worn by Robert Baden-Powell is handed down the line of his successors, with the current Chief Scout, Bear Grylls wearing this original award.

The Bronze Wolf Award, the only distinction of the World Organization of the Scout Movement, awarded by the World Scout Committee for exceptional services to world Scouting, was first awarded to Baden-Powell by a unanimous decision of the then ''International Committee'' on the day of the institution of the Bronze Wolf in Stockholm in 1935. He was also the first recipient of the Silver Buffalo Award in 1926, the highest award conferred by the Boy Scouts of America.

In 1927, at the Swedish National Jamboree he was awarded by the Österreichischer Pfadfinderbund with the "''Großes Dankabzeichen des ÖPB''.

In 1931 Baden-Powell received the highest award of the First Austrian Republic (''Großes Ehrenzeichen der Republik am Bande'') out of the hands of President Wilhelm Miklas. Baden-Powell was also one of the first and few recipients of the ''Goldene Gemse'', the highest award conferred by the Österreichischer Pfadfinderbund.

In 1931, Major Frederick Russell Burnham dedicated Mount Baden-Powell in California to his old Scouting friend from forty years before. Today their friendship is honoured in perpetuity with the dedication of the adjoining peak, Mount Burnham.

Baden-Powell was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize on numerous occasions, including 10 separate nominations in 1928.

As part of the Scouting 2007 Centenary, Nepal renamed Urkema Peak to Baden-Powell Peak.

Styles

:''The family name legally changed from Powell to Baden-Powell by Royal Licence on 30 April 1902.''

1857–1860: Robert Stephenson Smyth Powell

1860–1876: Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell

1876: Sub-Lieutenant Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell

1876–1884: Lieutenant Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell

1884–1892: Captain Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell

1892–1896: Major Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell

1896-25 April 1897: Major (Bvt. Lieutenant-Colonel) Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell

25 April – 7 May 1897: Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell

7 May 1897–1901: Lieutenant-Colonel (Bvt. Colonel) Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell

1901–1902: Major-General Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell

1902–1907: Major-General Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, CB

1907–12 October 1909: Lieutenant-General Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, CB

12 October – 9 November 1909: Lieutenant-General Sir Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, KCVO, CB

9 November 1909–1912: Lieutenant-General Sir Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, KCB, KCVO

1912–1923: Lieutenant-General Sir Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, KCB, KCVO, KStJ

1923–1927: Lieutenant-General Sir Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, Bt, GCVO, KCB, KStJ

1927–1929: Lieutenant-General Sir Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, Bt, GCMG, GCVO, KCB, KStJ

1929–1937: Lieutenant-General The Right Honourable The Lord Baden-Powell, Bt, GCMG, GCVO, KCB, KStJ

1937–1941: Lieutenant-General The Right Honourable The Lord Baden-Powell, Bt, OM, GCMG, GCVO, KCB, KStJ

See also

Baden-Powell House

Scouting memorials

Notes

Related readings: biographies

|location=London |publisher=Grant Richards |year=1900}}

External links

What would Baden-Powell do?

Category:Scouting pioneers Category:The Scout Association Category:Guiding Category:Recipients of the Bronze Wolf Award Category:British Army generals Category:13th Hussars officers Category:British spies Category:British military personnel of the Fourth Anglo-Ashanti War Category:British Army personnel of the Second Boer War Category:People of the Second Matabele War Category:Pre–World War I spies Category:People from Paddington Category:Old Carthusians Category:Outdoor educators Category:English Anglicans Category:Barons in the Peerage of the United Kingdom Category:Baronets in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom Category:Knights Commander of the Order of the Bath Category:Knights Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George Category:Knights Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order Category:Knights of Grace of the Order of St John Category:Members of the Order of Merit Category:Knights of Christ Category:Commandeurs of the Légion d'honneur Category:Grand Crosses of the Order of the Phoenix (Greece) Category:Commanders with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta Category:Recipients of the Order of Merit (Hungary) Category:People of the Victorian era Category:People of the Edwardian era Category:5th Dragoon Guards officers Category:Grand Crosses of the Order of the Dannebrog Category:Grand Crosses of the Order of the White Lion Category:Grand Commanders of the Order of the Redeemer Category:Recipients of the Silver Wolf Award Category:1857 births Category:1941 deaths

af:Robert Baden-Powell ar:بادن باول bn:রবার্ট ব্যাডেন পাওয়েল be-x-old:Робэрт Бадэн-Паўэл bg:Робърт Бейдън-Пауъл ca:Robert Baden-Powell cs:Robert Baden-Powell da:Robert Baden-Powell de:Robert Baden-Powell el:Ρόμπερτ Μπέηντεν-Πάουελ es:Robert Baden-Powell eo:Robert Baden-Powell fo:Robert Baden-Powell fr:Robert Baden-Powell gl:Robert Baden-Powell ko:로버트 베이든 파월 hy:Ռոբերտ Բեյդըն Փաուել hr:Robert Baden Powell id:Robert Baden-Powell it:Robert Baden-Powell he:רוברט באדן פאוול ht:Baden Powell la:Robertus Baden-Powell lv:Roberts Beidens-Pauels lb:Robert Baden-Powell lt:Robert Baden-Powell hu:Robert Baden-Powell ms:Robert Baden-Powell my:ရောဘတ် ဗေဒင်-ပိုရယ် nl:Robert Baden-Powell ja:ロバート・ベーデン＝パウエル no:Robert Baden-Powell nn:Robert Baden-Powell pl:Robert Baden-Powell pt:Robert Baden-Powell ro:Robert Baden-Powell ru:Бейден-Пауэлл, Роберт sco:Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell simple:Robert Baden-Powell sk:Robert Baden-Powell sl:Robert Baden-Powell sr:Роберт Бејден-Поуел sh:Robert Baden Powell fi:Robert Baden-Powell sv:Robert Baden-Powell ta:பேடன் பவல் th:โรเบิร์ต เบเดน โพเอลล์ uk:Роберт Бейден-Павелл ur:لارڈ بیڈن پاول vi:Robert Baden-Powell zh:羅伯特·貝登堡