Abstract
The author of the article deals with the themes of a birth of a new way of perceiving artistic and human freedom. They were, of course, also connected to specific power and political methods and ambitions, escalating in the political dictatorshiips of the 20th century.
Special attention is focused on the book of Dieter Thomä „Totality and its Discontents: Aeshetics and Politics in Richard Wagner and Sergei Eisenstein“ (2006). This uncanny episode from the years of the Hitler-Stalin-Pact, which carries heavy political import, also stands for an encounter between the main representatives of the total work of art (“Gesamtkunstwerk“) in opera and film.