In 1876, he met German musician Richard Wagner (1813–1883), who was impressed by his work, as was Friedrich Nietzsche (1812–1883) (Engs 2005). In fact, Wagner and Gobineau became close friends and Wagner used Gobineau’s theories of racial inequality, anti-Semitism, and Aryan superiority as scientific backing for his own racial theories of culture. Wagner “set the foundations, between 1848 and 1850, of the anti-semitic apocalypse.
