Beethoven, Wagner and the Political Movements of Their Time

From 23 to 27 September 2020, the Wagner world was to gather in Bonn for this year's Richard Wagner Congress. We had prepared ourselves intensively for this event over the years. A lavish and attractive programme had emerged from this.

At the beginning of May 2020, not entirely unexpectedly, the "International Beethoven Festival" - like many other festivals - had to cancel its anniversary programme for the 250th birthday of Bonn's most important son Corona. For this reason, too, we saw no other possibility than to cancel our congress as well. A whole series of programme items were very much related to the Beethovenfest in terms of both time and content. But it would also have been irresponsible and probably not even permissible until then to hold events with predominantly older persons from all over the world in a confined space.

The Richard Wagner Associations throughout the world were informed of the current developments by a joint letter from the RWVI and our RWV. We very much regret this cancellation, as we would have liked to give our "Wagner family" a forum for encounters, especially in this year 2020, in which the Bayreuth Festival cannot take place due to the pandemic.

However, we are already working on being able to offer our members and the Richard Wagner Associations a Wagner-Beethoven program in the first half of 2021, which will take up events of the now cancelled congress once again and will also include new program offerings.