The critic and one-time librettist Philip Hensher writes that "under the guidance of her repulsive racial-theorist son-in-law ... Cosima tried to turn Bayreuth into a centre for the cult of German purity." Thus, he continues, "By the time she died, Wagner's reputation was ... at the forefront of a terrible political dynamism: antique stagings of his works were presented to audiences of Brownshirts". The close association of the festival with Hitler and the Nazis during the 1930s was much more the work of Winifred—an overt Hitler supporter—than of Cosima, though Hensher asserts that "Cosima was as much to blame as anyone".