Eight years later, she was adopted by a distant German relative of her mother, Henrietta Karop, and her husband Karl Klindworth, a musician and a friend of Richard Wagner.

[3] It was hoped that the marriage would end Siegfried's homosexual encounters and the associated costly scandals and provide an heir to carry on the family business.

In one notable incident, in the late 1930s, a letter from her to Hitler prevented Hedwig and Alfred Pringsheim (whose daughter Katia was married to Thomas Mann) from being arrested by the Gestapo.

Scholars have not been allowed to see the letters, which have been kept locked away by Amélie Lafferentz, one of Winifred Wagner's grandchildren, who has insisted that they not be released until the whole family agrees to do so.

[7] Like Hitler, Wagner believed profoundly in the rite of a secular cult of German nationalism, of Nordic self-realization, and völkisch aspiration.

Her grandson Gottfried Wagner later recalled that "My aunt Friedelind was outraged when my grandmother again slowly blossomed as the first lady of right-wing groups and received political friends such as Emmy Göring, Ilse Hess, the former NPD Adolf von Thadden, Gerdy Troost, the wife of the Nazi architect and friend of Hitler Paul Ludwig Troost, the British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, the German NS-movie director Karl Ritter and the racist author and former Senator of the Reich Hans Severus Ziegler.

[11] The Music Keeper, an American play from 1982 by Elliot Tiber and André Ernotte, takes place two days before Wagner's death and is about her relationship with Hitler.