Death and Transfiguration: Religion and Belonging in Felix Gotthelf’s Indian Opera Mahadeva (1910)

Abstract

AbstractDoctor, composer, and Schopenhauer enthusiast Felix Gotthelf (1857–1930) created a symphonic drama Mahadeva (1910) in which he transformed a Goethe ballad into a religious–artistic manifesto. He combined Indian philosophy, as popularized by Paul Deussen, with Christianity and Schopenhauer’s philosophy. Inspired by Richard Wagner, he attempted an Indo-German national and religious revival in music based on a romantic conception of art and religion. It was in effect a conservative reorientation of a philosophical and artistic appropriation of Indian scriptures that betrayed attempts to establish the social ethos of the late German Empire as autochthonous and within the tradition of German intellectual and Reformation history. The author’s contribution is to examine the interconnections between religion, national revival, and music in the context of widespread cultural criticism shortly before the First World War.