The English translation is below:
“Then let us sail across the sea, and here and there found a young Germany, let us fructify it with the products of our toil and striving, and let us beget and bring up the noblest and most godlike children: but let us do better than the Spanish, who turned the New World into a papal slaughterhouse, and better than the English, who have turned it into a shop. Let us make it German and glorious; from its rising to its setting, the sun shall look down upon a beautiful, free Germany, and on the borders of the daughterlands, as upon those of their mother, no downtrodden, unfree people shall dwell, the rays of German freedom and German gentleness shall warm and transfigure the Cossack and the Frenchman, the Bushman and the Chinese.”

Marital disaster

But Wagner’s domestic life had broken down. The marriage between him and Minna, never very stable, had disintegrated completely under the strain of his continued infidelities. Wagner left his wife Minna, and was only briefly settled at Biebrich on the Rhine before returning to Vienna at the end of 1862.

The Ring cycle was published in 1863, and in its forward, Wagner wrote words that would prove pivotal for his future. Was there anywhere, he wrote, a German prince who had the wealth and vision to be a patron for the arts in Germany, to revitalise the terrible state of the arts as it now lay in Germany? Was there anyone who could support his vision of the arts, free from the degradation of the present?

No doubt these words gained fervour by Wagner’s knowledge of his parlous situation. His friends were no longer so close and inclined to help him, and he was currently between affairs. He was adrift emotionally, financially, and professionally. No one would extend him any credit – he was badly in debt again, and once more facing the necessity to flee his creditors and the threat of imprisonment for debt.

The Munich scandal

This was certainly the right moment for the deus ex machina – Prince Ludwig of Bavaria, reading those words, was captivated by the vision of himself as the saviour of Germany’s art. Coincidentally, it was not long before he was able to do something about this wonderful genius, Wagner, and the whole business of breathing life into the decaying body of German music. In 1864, the prince became King Ludwig II of Bavaria upon the death of his father, and almost his first task was that of requesting that Wagner come to München (Munich) to join his court as a true friend and artistic adviser. He paid Wagner’s debts and put an end to all the unpleasantness Wagner had found himself facing.