Rolf Hochhuth Research Articles

Documentary Drama: Form and Content

a mode indigenous to that decade. Statements to this effect are particularly frequent in West Germany, where the vogue of playmaking was first discernible. In his prefatory comments to an anthology of texts from Theater heute, published in 1970, Henning Rischbieter writes: wie lange scheint das schon her! Wer denkt noch an Kipphardts Prozessmontage In der Sache J. Robert Oppenheimer, an Peter Weissens szenisches Konzentrat des Auschwitz-Prozesses unter dem Titel Die Ermittlung?! The days of political drama are over: political commitment in the theatre has found other and better outlets, Rischbieter concludes. He confines his observations to the West German scene, where they may have greater claims to validity than elsewhere. Even so they are questionable. The method may have lost the position it had in the mid-sixties, but experiences gained from it have undeniably helped to nourish quite recent developments, in Germany and elsewhere. Discussion of the critical problem must begin with the admission that the term documentary is very imprecise. Rolf Hochhuth, hailed ever since Der Stellvertreter (1963) as a chief proponent of drama, has consistently declined the

Nazis and Christians

The publication of John Conway's book, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches 1933–45 may be a suitable moment for a comprehensive look at the wider subject of Nazism and Christianity and the recent literature about it. Ever since Rolf Hochhuth's Deputy with its travesty of the tragedy of the Jews of Europe, the world has resounded with clamor about the silence of the Deputy of Christ at the time when the blood brothers of the founder of the faith were being slaughtered.

The Deputy. By Rolf Hochhuth. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1964. 352 pp. $5.95

The Deputy. By Rolf Hochhuth. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1964. 352 pp. $5.95

The Silence of Pope Pius XII

It Is hardly surprising that the play Der Stellvertreter (The Deputy) by the young German author Rolf Hochhuth should have aroused controversy ever since its first performance in February, 1963, in Berlin. For it aims to depict not merely historical characters in a fictional drama, but historical characters in a historical setting of almost unprecedented significance and consequence. The use of the drama as a vehicle for political attack is nothing new; but it is rare for the author to append, in the published version of his text, a historical essay of forty pages, seeking to give the evidence upon which his drama is based. Nor is it surprising that so pejorative is the portrayal in the play of the late Pope Pius XII that many of those who served under him during the nineteen years of his pontificate, as well as many others who came in touch with him through his literally thousands of private or public audiences, have sought to come to his defense, in challenging the historical accuracy of Hochhuth's portrayal.

Rolf Hochhuth’s The Representative

(1964). Rolf Hochhuth’s The Representative. The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory: Vol. 39, No. 3, pp. 211-230.