Wagner the revolutionary flees Dresden to avoid arrest

The Royal Kapellmeister Richard Wagner is wanted for examination on account of his active participation in the recent rising here, but as yet he has not been found'.

- Terry Blain

Thus ran a warrant published in a Dresden newspaper on 19 May 1849, empowering the local police force to hunt down and capture the fugitive composer. Wagner was 120 miles away from Dresden at the time, staying with his friend Franz Liszt in Weimar. 'Wagner is of middle height, has brown hair, and wears glasses,' the warrant continued. 'Well, that applies to a lot of people!', the German composer reputedly retorted.

Joking aside, his situation was undoubtedly serious. Wagner had indeed been extensively involved in the May Uprising in Dresden, one of the last in a wave of violent insurrections sweeping Europe in the 1848-9 period. Sympathetic to the left-wing revolutionaries aiming to unite the 39 separate German states into a single constitutional democracy, he wrote articles inciting citizens to revolt, distributed hand grenades and monitored the action from the tower of the Dresden Kreuzkirche. While there, he (typically) engaged in an 'earnest philosophical discussion' with a schoolmaster and sent a note to his wife Minna requesting 'some necessary provisions'. Elsewhere, eyewitnesses reported seeing Wagner manning barricades, handling a gun and mingling with his fellow revolutionaries as the street-fighting against Saxon and Prussian troops unfolded.