He studied with Franz Liszt and was in close contact with Richard Wagner, Hans von Bülow, Peter Cornelius, Louise Otto-Peters, Ferdinand Lassalle, August Bebel and many other notable musicians of his time.

He served as composer and conductor of choirs in Mainz, Darmstadt, Baden-Baden, Würzburg, Munich, Leipzig, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Szczecin, Strasbourg and at Milan's La Scala.

Wendelin's grandfather, Johann Weißheimer I, from Osthofen, inherited a stone mill from his mother's family at the end of the 18th century.

His parents were wealthy and his father, a highly respected and multi-talented man with a keen interest in history and politics, had already been mayor for several years and a member of the first Osthofen Hessian Ständekammer, which is why Wendelin met, at a young age, men of the March Revolution of 1848 at the Stone Mill.

Despite his commitments as landowner and politician, Wendelin Weißheimer's father found time to deal with family and traditional, historical studies, the result of which was his multi-volume chronicle of the Osthofens recorded in handwritten diaries.

In his book: Experiences with Richard Wagner, Franz Liszt and many other contemporaries, he wrote: "An unsuspected new world had risen for me, in fact."

Soon thereafter, in Darmstadt, Wendelin Weißheimer listened to the Lohengrin opera, and in Frankfurt to the Flying Dutchman, putting him into a Wagnerian delirium.

On his departure, Schindelmeisser gave young Weißheimer a picture dedicated to him as well as one of many original letters written by Richard Wagner.

Just 20 years old, Weißheimer took up his post as conductor in Mainz on 17 August 1858 and, among other things, visited publisher Franz Schott and his musical wife Betty.

After a performance of Wagner's Faust overture, Weißheimer got to know his Rhine-Hessian compatriot, the poet-composer Peter Cornelius, who became a lifelong friend.

Liszt included Weißheimer's symphony on Schiller's Ritter Toggenburg on the program for the court concerts that he conducted on 13 March 1860.

To allow Weißheimer to take part in this concert at the Grand Ducal Palace, which was only accessible to the court and nobility, Liszt had him wear a tail coat and a white tie and placed him in the middle of the string orchestra, where he had to pretend to play the violin.

The next day on his visit to Liszt, Weißheimer met daughter Cosima, who was married for two years to von Bülow and who would later become Wagner's second wife.

Weißheimer achieved complete success with the presentation of his Grave in Busento by the court orchestra and the academic choir of Jena students.

After the Weimar meeting, Wagner tried unsuccessfully to reach Paris in late November where Prince Metternich had provided him with a garden apartment at the Austrian Embassy.

On 1 December, he arrived unexpectedly in Mainz to negotiate his stage festival play Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg with the Schott publishing house.

In order to be able to complete the composition without uninterruption, Wagner rented a small apartment in nearby Biebrich, just below the ducal castle on the Rhine.

In the garden pavilion by the lake shore, known as "Richard-Wagner-house," Wagner spent many hours boozing and proved to be a brilliant entertainer.

There Weißheimer intended to finish the piano score of the first Meistersingers act as quickly as possible in order to persuade the publisher, Schott, to make additional payments.

However, on 2 May, at the hotel Marquard, the Secretary of King Ludwig II of Bavaria, Council of State Franz Seraph von Pfistermeister, appeared with a mission to explore the residence of Richard Wagner and return with him to Munich.

Throughout his life Wendelin remained faithful to the Social Democratic Party, although this commitment brought disadvantages for his professional career.

Lassalle, who had particularly liked the libretto and was equally enthusiastic about the music, had offered to write Weißheimer a textbook on Florian Geyer, Thomas Munzer or the Bohemian Jan Žižka, but his death put an end to this idea.

For the premiere of Theodor Körner at the Berlin Court Opera, Liszt began with the former artistic director Count von Redern.

However, Count von Redern recommended Liszt to run the premiere on a different stage because Prince Louis Ferdinand was to play a role which would affect the Prussian royal family too strongly.

This was after Cosima, without reviewing the music, wrote on 6 July to Weißheimer that the text of his "Theodor Körner" could not be performed in court theaters because its seditious tendency might provoke trouble in peaceful times.

In the large central lodge, Weißheimer listened to the performance together with Liszt and French composer Camille Saint-Saëns outright, receiving from both acclaimed recognition for his accomplishment.

In the casino society there he spent hours with old friends whom he pleased most joyfully with improvisations on works by Wagner and Liszt and on his own compositions.

Weißheimer's piano pieces Reminiscence of Gioventu and At Beethoven's Grave, as well as his Symphony for Schiller's Knight Toggenburg match the spirit of the New German School.

German minstrel poems, texts by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Körner, Heinrich Heine and others found a musical home in his songs and cantatas.

After his departure with Wagner, Weißheimer turned increasingly to the labor movement and exercised with his compositions for male chorus a particular influence on the cultural aspirations of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.