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Picture Ellen Drexel, October 1985 Ellen Drexel (born August 20, 1919 in Wiesbaden, † April 17, 2002 in Eppstein in Taunus) was from 1923 to 1943 a ballet dancer. From 1943 to 1976 she was married to Bayreuth Festival director Wolfgang Wagner. After their divorce, she revised her diaries and notebooks through1999, collecting historical articles and systematically expanding her knowledge of the details and background of National Socialism and the Holocaust. Ellen Drexel was the daughter of Adolf Heinrich Drexel (a wine merchant born July 23, 1887 in Vockenhausen (Eppst.), † October 2, 1940 in Wiesbaden). Adolf Heinrich Drexel was the third of four children of a leather manufacturer Georg Christian Drexel and Elisabeth Drexel, b. Roth. His brother was the avant-garde painter Hans Christof Drexel. Ellen Drexel's mother was Thora Auguste Franziska Drexel, nee Nissen (born March 6, 1891 in Hamburg, † October 22, 1953 in Wiesbaden). Thora Drexel worked as a teacher in Wiesbaden and was interested in music, literature and theater and was influenced by the high educational level of her family. She was the daughter of the couple Otto and Dorothea Christin-Karoline, called Thora Nissen. Ellen's grandfather came from the wealthy Hamburg merchant family Nissen. Her grandmother Thora had a special role in the family writing poems, diaries, and letters to her parents from January 1877 to June 1881 in Burghersdorf, South Africa, where Otto Nissen was a successful wool merchant. In 1885 she reported in an illustrated diary in detail about a trip to Switzerland. Ellen Drexel grew up in this cultured milieu. Her mother's library soon aroused Ellen’s interest in literature. Ellen Drexel's career as a dancer and pantomime began early, as early as 1923 - when she was four years old - in "Madame Butterfly" at the Wiesbaden State Theater. Her ballet and pantomime career led Ellen Drexel from Wiesbaden to Darmstadt and Wroclaw, and from 1941 to the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin. During a guest performance at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden on tour in Rome, she met Wolfgang Wagner, the son of the Bayreuth festival director Winifred Wagner, who was then an assistant to Heinz Tietjen, the director-general of all the Prussian state theaters (then formally under Hermann Göring). Ellen Drexel moved into the Wolfgang Wagner’s apartment in the Berlin Muckstraße, becoming his fiancée and giving up her career as a ballet dancer. Wolfgang Wagner and Ellen Drexel married in Villa Wahnfried in Bayreuth on April 11, 1943 in the presence of the Wagner family. After marrying Wolgang Ellen took the surname of Wagner. Adolf Hitler sent roses to the bridal couple for display at their wedding. Ellen Wagner survived the bombing of her Berlin apartment, and while pregnant, was in Villa Wahnfried on April 7, 1945 when it was destroyed by Allied bombing. Ellen Wagner's daughter Eva was born a few days later, on April 14, 1945, in Winifred Wagner's country house in Oberwarmensteinach in the Fichtelgebirge. Ellen Wagner was witness to the occupation of the destroyed Villa Wahnfried by US troops and witnessed denazification proceedings against her mother-in-law Winifred Wagner. On April 13, 1947, Ellen Wagner's son Gottfried Helferich was born. The family lived at this time in the gardener cottage on the Villa Wahnfried estate, overlooking the American officer's headquarters in the Siegfried Wagner House. On January 24, 1955, the family moved to Villa Festspielhügel 3. This house was on Parsifal Street next to the "Aryanized" villa of the Gauleiter of the Bavarian Ostmark, Fritz Wächtler. After the war, Ellen Wagner accompanied her husband on business trips to sponsors and supporters from German business, politics, culture, and the media to rebuild the bankrupt family-owned company Bayreuther Festspiele, while essentially cared for their children. From 1945 Ellen Wagner recorded her daily activities and observations in a diary. She encouraged her son to learn about the Holocaust and the persecution by the Nazis of Kurt Weill, studies which had a lasting effect on his professional development. After her divorce from Wolfgang in July 1976 - the year of the 100th anniversary of the Bayreuth Festival - she began to write biographical notes and to critically and self-critically comment on her remaining diaries. In 1977 she intensified her contact with her uncle Hans Christoph Drexel, who had to work as a painter in Nazi Germany, and her interest in the formerly "degenerate art". Her Drexel family remained of particular importance to her. From 1999 until her death on April 17, 2002 she suffered from strokes and cancer. Her ashes, according to her wishes, were buried on May 27, 2002 in the cemetery in Cerro Maggiore, Italy, near Milan. Her diaries and notebooks as well as important documents about the families Wagner and Drexel-Nissen can be found in the Gottfried Wagner Archive in the Zurich Central Library.