Hochhuth, Rolf°
HOCHHUTH, ROLF°
HOCHHUTH, ROLF ° (1931– ), German playwright. Hochhuth, a Protestant, was a publisher's reader between 1955 and 1963 and was able to undertake, at the Vatican and elsewhere, the massive documentation needed for his controversial drama, Der Stellvertreter (The Deputy, 1964). This was produced in Berlin in February 1963 and appeared in print at the same time. The play immediately aroused a storm of protest in Catholic circles owing to its uncompromising condemnation of Pope Pius xii for his failure to condemn Hitler's Jewish policies. The two tragic heroes of Hochhuth's drama are Lieutenant Kurt *Gerstein, a dedicated Lutheran who infiltrated the Waffen-ss and tried to awaken world conscience to the Holocaust, and Father Riccardo Fontana, a Jesuit priest whose revolt against the silence of Pius xii eventually leads him to assume the role of "representative" of the Pope at Auschwitz. The character of Fontana is fictitious but in part inspired by the heroic Provost Bernhard *Lichtenberg of Cologne, whom the Nazis executed. Both the play and the appended documentation draw the conclusion that Pius xii sacrificed morality to the short-term financial and political interests of the Church. Der Stellvertreter appeared in England as The Representative and in the U.S. as The Deputy (published with Hochhuth's accompanying documentation, 1964). It provoked widespread reaction and was the subject of great controversy, bringing Pope *Paul vi to the defense of Pius xii. The 2002 film Amen was based on it.
Hochhuth continued to write controversial plays after he moved to Switzerland in 1963 and became resident playwright at the Basle Stadttheater. His 1978 play A Love in Germany focused on the governor of Wuerttemberg, Hans Filbinger, and his past as a military judge in World War ii. The play stirred a debate which resulted in Filbinger's resignation. His play McKinsey Is Coming, which discusses modern social justice and criticizes big business, was read by some critics as an exculpation of left-wing terrorism, a charge denied by Hochhuth. An earlier play, Soldiers, Necrology on Geneva (1967), which depicts the British bomb attacks in World War ii as crimes and portrays Winston Churchill as a war criminal, resulted in his friendship with the extreme right-wing British historian David *Irving, who was later accused of Holocaust denial. When Hochhuth defended Irving in a public remark in 2005, he came under heavy attack in the German press. Hochhuth later retracted his statement, claiming he was not familiar with Irving's extreme theses, and publicly apologized.
bibliography:
E.R. Bentley (ed.), Storm over "The Deputy" (1964). add. bibliography: P.M. Ellsberg, "An Interview with Rolf Hochhuth," in: C.F. Delzell (ed.), The Papacy and Totalitarianism between the Two World Wars (1974); T. Brechenbacher, "Der Dichter als Fallensteller – Hochhuths 'Stellvertreter' und die Ohnmacht des Faktischen," in: M. Wolffsohn and T. Brechenbacher (eds.), Geschichte als Falle (2001), 217–57; H.J. Cargas, "Hochhuth's 'The Deputy' – One Generation Later," in: Shofar, 5, 1 (1986), 30–42; U. Altermatt, "Die Hochhuth Debatte in der katholischen Schweiz," in: S. Käppeli (ed.), Lesarten des juedisch-christlichen Dialogs (2002), 19–32.
[Godfrey Edmond Silverman /
Michael Brenner (2nd ed.)]