CHAMBERLAIN, HOUSTON STEWART. - Philosopher and musicologist, born at Portsmouth on 2 September 1855, died at Bayreuth on 9 January 1927. He studied science, philosophy, and music at Geneva, Dresden, and Vienna. An enthusiastic follower of Wagner, whose daughter he married, he defended not only his music but also his conception of the world and of life in various writings.
Principal works: Das Drama R. Wagners (Leipzig 1892); Die ersten 20 Jahre der Bayreuther Bühnenfestspiele (Bayreuth 1896); Parsifal-Märchen (Munich 1900). C.’s renown, however, rests upon the book Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (there 1899): a historical-philosophical work of no slight importance as a forerunner of the Germanic Aryan racial myth. To Germanism are attributed the renewal and purification of blood, culture, and ethics. Dante, Humanism, and Christ himself are distorted and explained in this light. Typical in this regard are the works I. Kant, die Persönlichkeit als Einführung in sein Werk (Munich 1905), and Goethe (there 1912). C. believed that the war of 1914–18 would bring about the pan-Germanist racial myth, for which he was an ardent propagandist, and in 1916 he obtained German naturalization. Some of his writings from these years were translated into Italian.