Hochhuth, Rolf (1931– ), German dramatist, resident in Switzerland. His first play,
Der Stellvertreter (1963), first seen in Berlin in a production by
Piscator, indicted Pope Pius XII for criminal non-intervention in the Nazis' extermination of the Jews. Though far too long, over-ambitious, and muddled in its aims, it remains an impressive dramatic treatment of the Nazi era, and can be seen as the beginning of a post-war renaissance in German drama. It was staged in London by the
RSC as
The Representative (1963) and in New York as
The Deputy (1964). Hochhuth's second play,
Soldaten: Nekrolog auf Genf (1967), also too long and overlaid with documentation, accuses Winston Churchill of causing the death of his Polish ally General Sikorski and of criminal inhumanity in the bombing of Dresden. The play became a
cause célèbre in Britain long before it was produced in London as
Soldiers in 1968, following the abolition of stage censorship. It had previously been seen in English in Toronto and New York, also in 1968. Hochhuth's next plays, such as
Guerrillas (1970), a wholly fictional account of a modern revolution in America,
Die Hebamme (
The Midwife, 1972), a comedy based on the real life of a social worker,
Lysistrate und NATO (1974), and
Juristen (
Lawyers, 1983) had no influence abroad.
Judith, in which a Vietnam veteran plans the assassination of an American President, received its world première at the
Citizens' Theatre in 1984.
