He’s Austrian, Bitte!

Josef Woodard should have done his homework on Ernst Krenek before stating that my husband is “a German who landed in Southern California” (“Divergent Samples of 20th Century Music,” May 23).

Krenek is very much an Austrian, not a German. He was born Aug. 23, 1900, in Vienna, where he spent most of his life until his immigration to America in 1938. More than any composer of that time, he wrote many fierce articles, all published in the Wiener Zeitung, against German Nazism and their Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler. The premiere of his most important opera, “Karl V,” which was commissioned by the Vienna State Opera and which is a strong statement against German Nazi nationalism, was canceled in 1934 because of Nazi intrigue.

Ernst Krenek remained, at heart, an Austrian until his death in 1991 in Palm Springs.

GLADYS N. KRENEK

Palm Springs