Bayreuth Festival named by Bavaria's culture minister, Thomas Goppel, to take over the Festival. They were to take up their duties immediately, since their father had announced his retirement at the conclusion of the 2008 Festival. They were chosen ahead of the pair of their cousin, Nike Wagner, and Gerard Mortier, who had placed a late bid for the directorship on 24 August. The conductor Christian Thielemann has agreed to act as chief adviser to the new directors, effectively taking the role of music director of the Festival. The festival draws thousands of Wagner fans to Bayreuth every summer. It is very
Adolf Wagner despite nominally reporting to Reichsstatthalter Ritter von Epp. Wagner served as the master of ceremonies for the annual commemorations of the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch every 9 November in Munich. As Bavarian Education Minister, in April 1941 he ordered that school prayer should be replaced by Nazi songs and that crucifixes and religious pictures be removed from Bavarian classrooms, which outraged the Roman Catholic Church and the general public. The opposition to this move was so strong that Wagner was forced to rescind the order, one of the rare circumstances of successful public opposition in Nazi Germany. Despite this "faux