Unwelcome

Josef Krips, a vain but capable musician, is a man pursued by governments.

Because he is half-Jewish, he fled Vienna in 1937 before the Nazis stomped in, conducted in Belgrade until the Nazis overran Yugoslavia, went back to Vienna as a factory worker.

After the Russians took Vienna, when no other non-Nazi conductor was available, his fortunes rose. To Krips, in April 1945, the Russians sent an order: "There will be a State Opera performance by May 1st or there will be no State Opera." Krips obliged the U.S.S.R. with Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, despite such handicaps as the fact that some Russians had raped one of his star sopranos that afternoon. Red troops broke into a rehearsal, hauled off Krips and his orchestra, stood guard over them while they played funeral music--for nine hours--by the bier of a murdered Red general.

Hired to appear last week as guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Krips had no trouble getting a visa from the U.S. State Department in Vienna; U.S. Intelligence there decided that if he had any friendly feeling for Russia (he conducted concerts there in 1947) it could be laid to his weakness for adulation and not to any political views. But at the airport in New York, immigration agents nabbed him, took him to Ellis Island. What did they have against him? "Certain information" to investigate. Under the law they did not have to specify; following Immigration's usual highhanded, tightlipped way, they did not.

Said Krips, bewildered: "I have been received ... by the Pope, who gave me a special coin, by the Queen Mother of Belgium, who gave me an autographed picture, by Schuman, who gave me a kiss on both cheeks. I come to the U.S. and they give me Ellis Island." The New York Times called it "the latest ... in a long series of incidents that have made certain aspects of our immigration procedure look little short of ridiculous."

After two days' detention, Krips had had enough. Said he: "I have no politics. I am not a Communist; I am not a Nazi. I am for Mozart and Beethoven." Then he flew back to Salzburg without waiting to see whether U.S. Immigration would eventually clear him or not.

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