Waldheim and Austria’s Past

After much commemorating Austria’s cultural and political contributions to the 20th Century, Loewenberg finally gets down to the real message of his editorial, namely that present-day Austria is morally (“anti-Semitism is alive and well”) and culturally bankrupt.

With this distorted and one-sided view of the Austrian postwar scenery, Loewenberg has condemned not only my father’s generation but also those of us Spaetgeborenen who tried, at considerable sacrifice but great dedication, to build a new Austria, with dignity, democratic principles and underlying freedoms for all its citizens.

To label Austrian cultural policy bankrupt, is ludicrous. Austria has one of the most prolific orchestras of the world, the Vienna Philharmonic, which delights audiences not only in Austria but also worldwide and attracts first-rate guest conductors, such as Leonard Bernstein, Lorin Maazel and James Levine.

The Vienna State Opera is one of the foremost opera houses in the world and the Salzburg festivals certainly need no embellishment on my behalf. The theater is “well and alive” in Vienna. I would also suggest, that Loewenberg visit the famous Wuerthle Gallery in Vienna, where he could see a collection of modern art comparable to that of the Museum of Modern Art, including those “struggling avant-garde artists,” all of which, Loewenberg would have us believe, live in Vienna’s cold-water flats.

As far as his reference to Austria’s “subsidizing Hollywood films” is concerned, Loewenberg had better take a good look around, starting in this wonderful country in which I am privileged to live, as well as the rest of the world, to see that Austria has no monopoly on bad taste, superficiality and violence, but that this is a deplorable reflection of our time universally.

Finally, Austria with a population of better than 90% of Roman Catholics did freely elect a Jewish federal chancellor, Bruno Kreisky, who served the country well for 10 years. I wonder if that could have come to pass in an anti-Semitic state.

Mr. Loewenberg, a trifle more objectivity might go a long way to win friends.

GUSTAV KREBS

Rancho Palos Verdes