Nike Wagner

Who is Nike Wagner?

Nike Wagner is the director of an arts festival held annually at Weimar, Germany, and a noteworthy collaborator in the Bayreuth Festival, founded in 1876 by Richard Wagner, her paternal great-grandfather. Her parents are the theatre director Wieland Wagner, who directed the Bayreuth Festival until his death in 1966, and the choreographer Gertrud Reissiger; she is also the great-great‑granddaughter of Franz Liszt.

Nike Wagner holds a Ph.D. from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, obtained in 1980 under the direction of Erich Heller, and is the author of several important books on a variety of subjects, which include Karl Kraus and the Wagner family. Her article questioning the propriety of public subsidies given to glamorous cultural events in general and the Bayreuth Festival in particular, ‘Im Fadenkreuz der Kulturpolitik’, published in the July 2006 issue of Cicero: Magazin für politische Kultur, engendered a storm of controversy within Germany. She lives in Vienna.