This is a new biography of the German composer Richard Wagner, 100 years after his birth, re-examining his life in light of new documents and new sensibilities. Since World War II Wagner has often been wrongly associated with the name of Adolf Hitler because Hitler liked Wagner’s music and used it in Nazi propaganda. But Wagner died in 1883–fifty years before Hitler’s regime. It is time to have a fresh look at Wagner’s life in terms of new realities and without the Nazi associations which he does not deserve. His life was a series of abandonments and traumas, for the self-destructive but creative genius, in which he tried to survive as a free lance composer in the hostile environments of l9th century Germany.