Foreword by Festival Directress
Prof. Katharina Wagner

The scholarship foundation was initiated by Richard Wagner himself. It is well known that his original idea for the festival was to invite visitors to his festival and to grant them free admission - a utopia, as was already evident when the festival was founded in Bayreuth. But Wagner nevertheless attempted to realize part of this utopia by suggesting that the "Wagner associations" of his time should take over "the first and most important task" (R. Wagner), "to procure the means for the less wealthy to grant completely free access, even, if necessary, the costs of the journey and the foreign stay ...". Wagner understood this as a "moral act of the audience for the audience" and summed it up in the image that the patronage of the associations for the work of art would henceforth turn into a patronage of the audience. From the very beginning he pursued the goal of combining the social idea with that of promotion.