ABSTRACT
By 1900, obsession with fame had become a European-wide phenomenon, but one complicated by the divergence of celebrity and charisma into the conflicting concepts of integration and insurgency. In the 1840s, Franz Liszt still represented the marketability of celebrity and the magnetic aura of noble glamour and political revolution without contradiction. By 1900, Richard Wagner was divisive as either a privileged cultural celebrity or a firebrand whose utopian vision threatened the status quo. Various cultural developments spurred this divergence, including the increasing importance of fame as a social code, the high profile of scientific genius as applied to the arts, and the pathologization of genius that emphasized the dangerous nature of artistic charisma.
