(Credit: picture-alliance/dpa/ M. Merz)

Wagner expert and pianist Stefan Mickisch has been banned from the famed Villa Wahnfried in Bayreuth. Mickisch has been calling the COVID-19 restrictions brought on by German federal government and Prime Ministers of the German federal states “Corona fascism” on his Facebook private account. Most recently he compared himself in a Facebook post with the Nazi resistance fighter Hans Scholl.

As a result, Bayreuth Festival authorities have acted swiftly and noted that the ban has been issued by the Director of Richard Wagner Museum Dr. Sven Friedrich.

In 2014, Mickisch tried to clear Richard Wagner of the accusations of antisemitism. The pianist was subsequently accused of downplaying the significance of the Holocaust. Since April 2020, Mickisch was disseminating conspiracy theories by warning of the threat of total surveillance with vaccine chips and called for resistance to the government’s official policy on COVID-19.