28 Wagner disliked injustice, the city of Leipzig (although he was born there), Jews and the composer Mendelsohn in particular. When he was writing The Flying Dutchman, it had not yet dawned on him that everything he disliked was connected and formed something akin to a spider web: all injustice stems from the Jews, especially from the composer Mendelsohn living in Leipzig. He arrived at this fundamental understanding later in life. Meanwhile, Wagner was creating revolutionary circumstances in the country and in opera, conducting orchestras but also, in cahoots with some rabble-rousers, composing pompous symphonies with vocals, which were then performed in opera houses, much to the amazement of the great German composer Brahms, since such a thing was quite beyond his imagination. Walking

