Isolde Wagner

Isolde Josefa Ludovika Beidler (née von Bülow; 10 April 1865 – 7 February 1919) was the first child of the composer Richard Wagner and his wife, who is generally known as Cosima Wagner (though the two of them married only in 1870). Isolde herself married the Swiss-born conductor (1872–1930) and was the mother of author (1901–1981), celebrated at his birth as "Richard Wagner's first grandchild". Biography First years Isolde Josefa Ludovika von Bülow was born in Munich slightly more than nine months after her parents Richard Wagner and Cosima Liszt had spent an amorous week alone together in a house on the shores of Lake Starnberg, south of Munich and north of Garmisch. Both her parents were music celebrities: the child's illegitimacy risked scandal, leading to professional, social and financial difficulties. Cosima's husband Hans von Bülow, who was hugely in awe of Wagner's musical talent, acknowledged the baby as his own, and she started out in life as Isolde von Bülow. (Hans von Bülow is reported as having stated that "if it had been anybody but Wagner, I would have shot him".) When, in 1894, von Bülow died, Isolde would therefore be one of his legally recognised heirs, along with two elder half-sisters who really were the daughters of Hans von Bülow and Cosima Wagner: this would contribute to family ructions.