Gudrun Wagner
Gudrun Wagner ( born June 15, 1944 in Olsztyn, East Prussia, as Gudrun Armann, † November 28, 2007 in Bayreuth ), was a co-organizer of the Richard Wagner Festival in Bayreuth.
Life
Gudrun Wagner grew up in Long Quaid, near Regensburg, to where they had come than four weeks old child after the expulsion from East Prussia. After training for foreign languages and abroad in Paris, Birmingham and London, she applied in 1965 to a job advertisement in the newspaper for the press office of the festival, where she worked as a secretary. There she met Dietrich Mack, chief press officer of the Festival and later co-editor of the diaries Cosima Wagner, whom she married in 1970. Five years later, she became head of the Office of festival director Wolfgang Wagner. After both be had from their partners divorce, followed in 1976 the marriage. In May 1978, the daughter Catherine was born.
As an assistant (from 1984 ) and personal assistant ( as of 1985) her husband became Gudrun Wagner an influential co-organizer of the Festival. As increasingly the question of succession Wolfgang Wagner was discussed as festival director and 2001 for the first time calls for his resignation were heard, he brought his wife as a candidate into play. However, the plan failed because of the vote of the Board of the Festival, which gave Wolfgang Wagner's daughter from his first marriage, Eva Wagner- Pasquier preference, whereupon he refused his resignation on his contract as festival director pointed for life, and remained in office. Due to the ailing health of her husband headed de facto Gudrun Wagner in recent years until her death in the shops and influenced in this position numerous occupations and artistic decisions. According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung believes they have forced the split in the family and had been responsible for the preservation of the artistic status quo. The intra-family dispute was inhibited as " necessary " reform of the prestigious festival. " Gudrun Wagner was as a woman, Wolfgang Wagner and as his personal assistant as well as unflinchingly resolute, but this in their work always loyal and true conscious. In the last years of Wolfgang Wagner's many artistic and organizational decisions would certainly have been very different for the festival without them " ( Klaus Schultz ).
According to the festival management Gudrun Wagner, was issued on November 26, 2007 for an operation in a hospital in Bayreuth. She died on the morning of November 28, 2007, probably due to a pulmonary embolism.