Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Vienna, Austria
About Ernst Kunwald
- Ernst Kunwald (April 14, 1868 – December 12, 1939) was an Austrian conductor. Ernst Kunwald was born and died in Vienna.
- He studied law at the University of Vienna, earning his Dr.
- Juris in 1891.
- He also studied piano with Teodor Leszetycki and composition with Hermann Graedener.
- At the Leipzig Conservatory he studied with the composer Salomon Jadassohn. He conducted opera in the following cities: Rostock (1895–1897), Sondershausen (1897–1898), Essen (1898–1900), Halle (1900–1901), Madrid (1901–1902), Frankfurt (1902–1905), and at Berlin’s Kroll Opera House (1905-1906). He served as assistant conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic (1907–1912).
- He was the conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra 1912–1917 and the Cincinnati May Festival 1914–1917.
- His approach to conducting was very different than his predecessor in Cincinnati, the flamboyant Leopold Stokowski.
- A Stokowski detractor, J.
- Herman Thuman, wrote a review in The Cincinnati Enquirer that Kunwald “…does not find it necessary to resort to vaudeville stunts to gain the acclaim of the crowd”.
- American premiers in Cincinnati under Kunwald included Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No.
- 3 and Richard Strauss’ Alpine Symphony.
- He also conducted the orchestra’s first recording, for Columbia Records, on January 13, 1917: the Barcarolle from Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. America’s entry into World War I caused the downfall of the Austrian conductor’s career in Cincinnati.
- On November 17, 1917 the Daughters of the American Revolution brought pressure on the public safety director of Pittsburgh to forbid Kunwald’s conducting his orchestra in that city.
- He was arrested by the United States Marshals Service December 8, 1917 and released from jail the next day.
- His resignation as conductor was accepted by the board at that time.
- On January 12, 1918 he was interned under the Alien Enemies Act and imprisoned at Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia.
- He was joined in internment by fellow conductor Karl Muck, who was arrested March 25, 1918.
- The evidence on which Kunwald was interned was never fully divulged, but conducting German music and pride in his homeland may have been considered overly propagandistic.
- He conducted the Star-Spangled Banner before one concert after telling the orchestra and audience (many of whom were German) that his sympathies were with his own country.
- This information was noted in a memo dated December 19, 1917 from J.
- Edgar Hoover to the United States Attorney General.
- His sentiments led to the revocation of his honorary membership in Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia fraternity in May 1919 (Sinfonia Handbook, Spring 1939, p.
- 24). After deportation Kunwald conducted at Königsberg (1920–1927) and then the Konzerthausorchester Berlin (Berlin Symphony Orchestra) (1928–1931). Ernst Kunwald was 5 feet 9 inches tall, with dark hair and blue eyes.
- He was married to Lina, a German citizen born in 1869. A review of a concert he led with the New York Philharmonic in February 1906 described him as “not a great conductor; not one with the finest feelings or a subtle sense for the deeper things in music; but he is a capable one, in many ways an intelligent one, a vigorous and energetic one”.
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