Gudrun Wagner the assistant of Wolfgang Wagner, the grandson of Richard Wagner and director of the Bayreuth Festival which the composer founded. She and Wolfgang Wagner each divorced their spouses in order to marry each other in 1976. Their daughter Katharina, who succeeded her father as co-director of the festival, was born in 1978. Although officially keeping a low profile, she exercised influence on the festival from behind the scenes. Wolfgang Wagner's attempt in 2001 to install his wife as successor did not pass a vote of the board of the festival foundation. She had been recovering from an operation in hospital
Ernst August Wagner once by drowning himself and by jumping off a bridge, though both attempts failed, because he was, according to his own words, "too weak". In the following years his wife bore four more children, concluding in July 1909 with Rudolph Alfred. Wagner was said to have been unhappy about the births of his children and complained about the financial stress of feeding his family; he was seemingly indifferent to the interruption of his birthday in 1909 by infant Rudolph's death. Some time in 1906 or 1907, thinking that the people from Mühlhausen had passed on their knowledge about his crime,