Wolfgang Wagner of the World into Music"). Wolfgang Wagner Wolfgang Wagner (30 August 191921 March 2010) was a German opera director. He is best known as the director (Festspielleiter) of the Bayreuth Festival, a position he initially assumed alongside his brother Wieland in 1951 until the latter's death in 1966. From then on, he assumed total control until he retired in 2008, although many of the productions which he commissioned were severely criticized in their day. He had been plagued by family conflicts and criticism for many years. He was the son of Siegfried Wagner, the grandson of Richard Wagner, and the
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