Wolfgang Zuckermann (1922–) is a harpsichord builder, author, social activist, and bookstore owner. He established a harpsichord workshop in New York and in 1959 developed a harpsichord kit that allowed individuals to assemble their own harpsichords. These kits were widely sold and continue to be sold under the Zuckermann name. In 1969 he sold the business and moved to England and then to France, where he established a bookstore in Avignon. He retired from that business in 2012. He left the United States because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. Apparently, he wrote to RK in 1966 asking him to use his role as an artist to show opposition to the war. The letter RK wrote in response indicates his feelings about the suggestion.

January 16, 1967

Dear Mr. Zuckermann:

Thank you for your letter of December 24. I share your dismay and indignation about the conduct of the United States Government in its foreign affairs, especially in Vietnam. But I question seriously the advisability of using the arts as a sounding board for making public protest.

It seems to me that directly political expression of protest on the part of an artist is more suitably a function of his existence as a citizen, voter, and taxpayer. An art which is sincere will inevitably protest by its very existence, perhaps in a long-range way that need not necessarily mention the immediate political issue at hand. I have had too much experience in totalitarian countries of the imposition of propaganda on artists and scientists, of the cultivation of an attitude that leads to an acceptance as a matter of course of a habit of putting a topical or political slant on everything. It seems to me that an artist who of his own volition connects his work to a political or topical purpose has very little legitimate defense against outside attempts to force him to do the same thing.