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The Case of Wagner (Der Fall Wagner) is a German philosophy book by Friedrich Nietzsche, originally published in 1888. Subtitled "A Musician's Problem", it has also been known as "Wagner's Case" in English. It is a critique of Richard Wagner and the announcement of Nietzsche's rupture with the German artist, who had involved himself too much, in Nietzsche's eyes, in the Völkisch movement and antisemitism. His music is no longer represented as a possible "philosophical affect", and Wagner is ironically compared to Georges Bizet. However, Wagner is presented by Nietzsche as only a particular symptom of a broader "disease" which is affecting Europe, that is nihilism.
This work is in sharp contrast with the second part of Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, wherein he praised Wagner as fulfilling a need in music to go beyond the analytic and dispassionate understanding of music. Prior to Case of Wagner Nietzsche had begun to soften his stance on his one-time friend and mentor in Wagner at Bayreuth (part of the Untimely Meditations). One of the last works that Nietzsche wrote returned to the critical theme of Case of Wagner. In Nietzsche contra Wagner Nietzsche pulls together excerpts from his works to show that he has consistently had the same thoughts about music, only misapplying to Wagner in the earliest works.
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