HOCHHUTH, Rolf

PUBLICATIONS

Plays

Der Stellvertreter: Ein christliches Trauerspiel (produced West Berlin, 1963). 1963; as The Deputy (produced New York, 1964), published as The Representative, 1963; as The Deputy, 1964.

Soldaten, Nekrolog auf Genf: Tragödie (produced West Berlin, 1967). 1967; as Soldiers (produced Toronto, Ontario, and New York, 1968), published as Soldiers: An Obituary for Geneva, 1968.

Guerillas: Tragödie in fünf Akten (produced Stuttgart, West Germany, 1970). 1970.

Die Hebamme: Komödie [The Midwife] (produced 1972). 1971.

Lysistrate und die NATO: Komödie Mit e. Studie: Frauen und Mütter, Bachofen und Germaine Greer [Lysistrata and NATO] (produced 1974). 1973.

Tod eines Jägers [Death of a Hunter]. 1976.

Juristen: Drei Akte für sieben Spieler. 1979.

Arztinnen: 5 Akte. 1980.

Judith (produced Glasgow, Scotland, 1984).

Unbefleckte Empfangnis: Ein Kreidekreis [Immaculate Conception: A Chalk Circle] (produced Berlin, 1989).

Sommer 14: Ein Totentanz [Summer 14] (produced Vienna, 1990).

Alle Dramen [All dramas] (2 vols.). 1991.

Novel

Eine Liebe in Deutschland. 1978; as A German Love Story, 1980.

Short Stories

Atlantik-Novelle: Erzählungen und Gedichte. 1985.

Other

Krieg und Klassenkrieg [War and Class War] (essays). 1971.

Zwischenspiel in Baden-Baden. 1974.

Die Berliner Antigone: Prosa und Verse [The Berlin Antigone] (novella). 1975.

Tell '38. 1979; translated as Tell '38, 1984.

Spitze des Eisbergs: Ein Reader. 1982.

Rauber-Rede: 3 deutsche Vorwurfe: Schiller/Lessing/Geschwister Scholl. 1982.

Schwarze Segal: Essays und Gedichte. 1986.

Tater und Denker: Profile und Probleme von Casar bis Junger: Essays. 1987.

War hier Europa? Reden, Gedichte, Essays. 1987.

Alan Turing: Erzählung. 1987.

Menzel: Maler des licts. 1991.

Von Syrakus aus gesehen, gedacht, erzählt. 1991.

Tell gegen Hitler: Historische studien. 1992.

Wessis in Weimar: Szenen aus einem besetzten land. 1993.

Julia oder der weg zur macht: Erzeahlung. 1994.

Effis nacht: Monolog. 1996.

Und Brecht sah das tragische nicht: Pleadoyers, Polimiken, Profile. 1996.

Editor, Sämtliche Werke, und eine Auswahl der Skizzen und Gemälde, by Wilhelm Busch:

Und die Moral von der Geschicht. Eingeleitet mit dem Essay von Theodor Heuss aus der Biographie Die grossen Deutschen. 1959.

Was beliebt ist auch erlaubt. 1960.

Editor, Lustige Streiche in Versen und Farben, by Wilhelm Busch. 1960.

Editor, Sämtliche Bildergeschichten mit 3380 Zichnungen und Fachsimilies, by Wilhelm Busch. 1961.

Editor, Liebe in unserer Zeit: Sechzehn Erzählungen (2 vols.). 1961.

Editor, Am grauen Meer, by Theodor Storm Mosaik. 1962.

Editor, Die Deutschen, by Otto Flake. 1962.

Editor, Dichter und Herrscher, by Thomas Mann. 1963.

Editor, Die grossen Meister: Deutsche Erzähler des 20. Jahrhunderts (2 vols.). 1964.

Editor, Des Lebens Uberfluss. 1969.

Editor, Ruhm und Ehre. 1970.

Editor, with Hans-Heinrich Koch, Kaisers Zeiten: Bilder einer Epoche, by Oscar Tellgmann. 1973.

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Film Adaptation:

The Investigation, 1965, from the play The Deputy.

Bibliography:

"Auswahlbibliographie zu Rolf Hochhuth" by Gunter Peters, in Text + Kritik (Germany), 58, 1978, pp. 62-65.

Critical Studies:

Pope Pius XII and the Jews, an Answer to Hochhuth's Play Der Stellvertreter (The Deputy) by Desmond Fisher, 1963; The Storm over The Deputy, edited by Eric Bentley, 1964; The Deputy Reader: Studies in Moral Responsibility, edited by Dolores Barracano Schmidt and Earl Robert Schmidt, 1965; Rolf Huchhuth by Rainer Taëni, translated by R.W. Last, 1977; Rolf Hochhuth by Margaret E. Ward, 1977; "The Apostate Ethic: The Alternative to Faith in Hochhuth's Der Stellvertreter " by E. Elaine Murdaugh, in Seminar (Canada), 15, 1979, pp. 275-89; "American Mythologies: Rolf Hochhuth's Plays Guerillas, Tod eines Jagers, and Judith " by Manfred Durzak, in Amerika! New Images in German Literature, edited by Heinz D. Osterle, 1989; "'Was von Bismarck ubrigblieb … ': Rolf Hochhuth and the German Question" by Lucinda Rennison, in The New Germany: Literature and Society after Unification, edited by Osman Durrani, Colin Good, and Kevin Hilliard, 1995.

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Since the staging of Rolf Hochhuth's first play, Der Stellvertreter (1963; The Deputy ), the Nazi years have been central to much of his work. Hochhuth's dramas nevertheless moved away from the Holocaust to deal with other aspects of the Nazi regime or with other episodes in the history of state violence in twentieth-century Europe. These plays have made him one of the most influential playwrights in postwar Germany, though The Deputy remains his best-known production.

By 1972 Hochhuth's Deputy had been produced in 26 countries, inspiring a wave of documentary or factual dramas on similar subjects on both sides of the Atlantic, notably The Investigation (1965) by Peter Weiss and a string of plays in America focused on the Vietnam War. When The Deputy was first staged, the government of Konrad Adenauer was increasingly under fire for its attitude to the resurgence of swastika daubings in the Federal Republic and for the continued employment of former Nazi officials in important positions, some of whom were discussed in the play. The first productions of The Deputy thus fell on fertile soil in Germany, some saying that they contributed to the defeat of the Adenauer administration in elections the following year. Hochhuth became a celebrated figure on the German left and was able to devote himself to writing full-time (he had worked in a bookstore and a publishing house).

The product of 10 years of meticulous research, The Deputy was widely construed primarily as an attack on the Catholic Church (Hochhuth being a Protestant with radical political leanings). The play met with a fierce reaction from the Catholic hierarchy, already engaged in a heated internal battle over Catholic responses to anti-Semitism, and there were attempts to have the play banned. From the time of the heady debates on the subject at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), church leaders have cited The Deputy as a prime example of the modernist tendency that sought to use the Holocaust as a weapon against the Catholic Church. In interviews at the time, Hochhuth appeared more moderate than his critics cast him, focusing exclusively on the choices made by Pope Pius XII during the commission of the Nazis' Final Solution. One byproduct of the debate over The Deputy was the strengthening of voices critical of the pope within the Jewish world, where most Jewish observers had until then lavished praise on Pius XII for his quiet efforts to rescue Jews during the Holocaust.

Hochhuth's second play, Soldaten, Nekrolog auf Genf (1967; Soldiers, 1968), implicated Britain's wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the firebombing of civilian targets in Germany during World War II. The play was banned in England, where the bombing of Dresden, Hamburg, and other cities was officially cast as part of a military campaign and where the reputation of Churchill, his funeral having brought the country to a standstill in 1965, was still unimpeachable. The ban was subsequently rescinded, but Hochhuth had reaffirmed his own reputation for hitting out against crimes against humanity committed in the course of war.

With Juristen (1979; Jurists ) Hochhuth returned to the Nazi theme, turning a spotlight on the former Nazi judges still employed in postwar Germany. Once more Hochhuth hit home, provoking the resignation of the head of the government of one of West Germany's largest states, Baden-Württemberg. In other plays at the time, Hochhuth turned to issues relating to Germany's responsibility for the two world wars and the responsibility of its leaders for the division of the country into two states, East and West Germany, after 1945. He has lived most of his working life in Switzerland, a choice that reflects his alienation from the West German state created in the wake of the collapse of the Nazi regime.

The contemporary style and political edge of Hochhuth's plays jostle with a profound attachment to the theater of the German Enlightenment (Aufklärung). The Deputy, in particular, betrays Hochhuth's attachment to the liberal agenda of Schiller, according to whom an individual is ultimately responsible for his or her actions. Hochhuth's depiction of the Holocaust turns essentially on the decision of some individuals to oppose the Nazis' anti-Jewish policy and by contrast the motivations that prevented others from doing the same. Hochhuth's indictment of the German elite for a succession of moral failures over the course of the twentieth century speaks not of a rejection of any particular form of German nationalism or statist ideology. Instead the theme linking The Deputy and his other historical plays is his insistence on the responsibility of individuals in every historic situation to summon the courage to stand out against inhumanity.

—George R. Wilkes

See the essay on The Deputy.