21 Facts About Isolde Beidler

Isolde Josefa Ludovika Beidler was the first child of the composer Richard Wagner and his wife, who is generally known as Cosima Wagner.

Isolde herself married the Swiss-born conductor Franz Beidler and was the mother of author Franz Wilhelm Beidler, celebrated at his birth as "Richard Wagner's first grandchild".

On 20 December 1900, now aged 35, Isolde married 28-year-old Swiss conductor Franz Beidler.

Isolde Beidler had arrived in Bayreuth in 1896 to take a post as an assistant musical director at the Festspielhaus, and like his new wife was, according to sources, capable of singular tactlessness.

The couple settled at Colmdorf Manor near Bayreuth, where Isolde Beidler set up a private aviary of more than 100 exotic birds that he had collected in Russia.

However, under the adept management of Cosima Wagner, the estate that the family had inherited from Richard Wagner had become fabulously wealthy, and Isolde Beidler continued to receive a financial allowance from her mother, which was becoming one of several factors giving rise to inter-generational tensions.

Between 1902 and 1905 the couple lived in Moscow and St Petersburg where Isolde Beidler held a post as Imperial Music Director.

Franz Isolde Beidler had returned from Russia to conduct The Ring in 1904, but his 1906 Parsifal turned out to be his last appearance as a conductor at Bayreuth.

Franz Isolde Beidler embarked on an affair with a young singer called Emmy Zimmermann in 1910.

Isolde Beidler was still receiving a significant proportion of the Wagner family income, along with reimbursement from the Wagner estate of certain further one-time expenses such as their 1912 relocation costs.

Also, in 1912 Isolde Beidler was diagnosed with serious lung damage, which seems to have been a symptom of the tuberculosis that would ultimately kill her.

Isolde Beidler's threats proved unproductive so she launched a legal inheritance case in the Bayreuth District Court against her mother.

Isolde Beidler's lawyer had accordingly made some attempt to recruit public opinion to back his client's side, which had the effect of intensifying the mutual bitterness between the parties.

Isolde Beidler was now expressly not acknowledged as a daughter of Richard Wagner.

Isolde Beidler remained married to Franz, even though his tally of illegitimate children increased to three, of two different mothers.

Nevertheless, Siegfried's marriage to Winifred Williams and the birth of Wieland Wagner in 1917 meant that at last Franz Wilhelm Beidler was no longer Richard Wagner's only grandchild.

The lung damage that doctors had diagnosed as tuberculosis was never cured, and Isolde Beidler sickened further in Munich.

Isolde Beidler received treatment at a nursing home in Partenkirchen where, ominously, the disease was diagnosed in both lungs.

Patient notes from the Partenkirchen clinic strongly indicate that Isolde Beidler was most uncooperative in her treatment.

Isolde Beidler's family was represented at her burial three days later only by her husband, her son, and her half-sister.

Isolde Beidler's mother was told of her death, in response to a casual enquiry, only in 1929.