There have also been claims that the orchestra has not always accepted members who are visibly members of ethnic minorities. In 1970, Otto Strasser, the former chairman of the Vienna Philharmonic, wrote in his memoirs, "I hold it incorrect that today the applicants play behind a screen; an arrangement that was brought in after the Second World War in order to assure objective judgments. I continuously fought against it... because I am convinced that to the artist also belongs the person, that one must not only hear, but also see, in order to judge him in his entire personality. [...] Even a grotesque situation that played itself out after my retirement was not able to change the situation. An applicant qualified himself as the best, and as the screen was raised, there stood a Japanese before the stunned jury. He was, however, not engaged, because his face did not fit with the "Pizzicato-Polka" of the New Year's Concert." In 1996, flautist Flury still expressed the view that "The soul does not let itself be separated from the cultural roots that we have here in central Europe."