Hochhuth, Rolf 1931-

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HOCHHUTH, Rolf 1931-

PERSONAL: Born April 1, 1931, in Eschwege, Germany; son of Walter (a shoe-factory owner and accountant) and Ilse (Holzapfel) Hochhuth; married Marianne Heinemann, June 29, 1957 (divorced, 1972); children: Martin, Friedrich. Education: Studied bookkeeping at a vocational school; attended universities of Marburg, Munich, and Heidelberg, 1952-55. Religion: German Evangelical Church.

ADDRESSES: Home—P.O. Box 661, 4002 Basel, Switzerland.

CAREER: Acted as city-hall runner for first postwar mayor (his uncle) of Eschwege, Germany; C. Bertelsmann (publisher), Gütersloh, Westphalia, Germany, reader and editor, beginning 1955; Municipal Theatre, Basel, Switzerland, assistant director and playwright, 1963.

AWARDS, HONORS: Gerhart Hauptmann Preis, 1962, and Berliner Kunstpreis, 1963, both for Der Stellvertreter; Young Generation prize, 1963; Melcher prize, 1965; Basel Art prize, 1976; Stadt München und des Verbandes Bayerischer Verlager prize, 1980; Geschwister-Scholl prize, 1980; Lessing prize, 1981.

WRITINGS:

Der Stellvertreter: Schauspiel (play; produced in West Berlin at Volksbuehne Theatre, 1963; produced as The Representative by Royal Shakespeare Company, 1963; produced as The Deputy at Brooks Atkinson Theatre, New York, NY, 1964), foreword by Erwin Piscator, 1963, translation by Robert David MacDonald published as The Representative, Methuen (London, England), 1963, translation by Richard Winston and Clara Winston published as The Deputy, foreword by Albert Schweitzer, Grove (New York, NY), 1964, reprinted, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1997.

Soldaten: Nekrolog auf Genf (play; produced in West Berlin at Volksbuehne Theatre, 1967; translation produced as Soldiers at Royal Alexandra Theater, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 1968; produced in New York, NY, at Billy Rose Theatre, 1968), Rowohlt, 1967, translation by David MacDonald published as Soldiers: An Obituary for Geneva, Grove (New York, NY), 1968.

Guerillas: Tragoedie in fünf Akten (five-act play; produced in Stuttgart, West Germany, 1970), Rowohlt, 1970.

Krieg und Klassenkrieg (essays; title means "War and Class War"), foreword by Fritz J. Raddatz, Rowohlt, 1971.

Die Hebamme: Komoedie (play; title means "The Midwife"; produced in May, 1972), Rowohlt, 1971.

Lysistrate und die NATO (play; title means "Lysistrata and NATO"; produced, 1974), Rowohlt, 1973.

Zwischenspiel in Baden-Baden, Rowohlt, 1974.

Die Berliner Antigone: Prosa und Verse (novella; title means "The Berlin Antigone"), Rowohlt, 1975.

Tod eines Jaegers (play; title means "Death of a Hunter"), Rowohlt, 1976.

Eine Liebe in Deutschland (novel), Rowohlt, 1978.

Juristen: Drei Akte für sieben Spieler (play), Rowohlt, 1979.

Tell '38, Rowohlt, 1979, translated from the German, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1984.

Arztinnen: 5 Akte, Rowohlt, 1980.

A German Love Story (novel), translated by John Brownjohn, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1980.

Spitze des Eisbergs: Ein Reader, Rowohlt, 1982.

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

Judith (play), produced in Glasgow, Scotland, at Citizens' Theatre, 1984.

Atlantik-Novelle: Erzahlungen und Gedichte (title means "Atlantic Novella"), Rowohlt, 1985.

Schwarze Segal: Essays und Gedichte, Rowohlt, 1986.

Tater und Denker: Profile und Probleme von Casar bis Junger: Essays, Deutsche Verlags-Anstahlt, 1987.

War hier Europa? Reden, Gedichte, Essays, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1987.

Alan Turing: Erzahlung, Rowohlt, 1987.

Unbefleckte Empfangnis: Ein Kreidekreis (title means "Immaculate Conception: A Chalk Circle"), produced in Berlin, Germany, 1989.

Sommer 14: Ein Totentanz (title means "Summer 14"), produced in Vienna, Austria, at Akademietheater, 1990.

Alle Dramen (title means "All Dramas"), two volumes, Rowohlt, 1991.

Menzel: Maler des licts, Insel, 1991.

Von Syrakus aus gesehen, gedacht, erzeahlt, Volk & Welt (Berlin, Germany), 1991.

Tell gegen Hitler: Historische studien, Insel, 1992.

Wessis in Weimar: Szenen aus einem besetzten land, Volk & Welt (Berlin, Germany), 1993.

Julia oder der weg zur macht: Erzeahlung, Volk & Welt (Berlin, Germany), 1994.

Effıs nacht: Monolog, Rowohlt, 1996.

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

(Coauthor) The Deputy and Other Contemporary German Plays, Continuum (New York, NY), 1999.

Hitlers Dr. Faust: Tragödie, Rowohlt, 2000.

Das Recht auf Arbeit; Nachtmusik: Zwei Dramen, Rowohlt, 2000.

Alle Erzählungen, Gedichte und Romane, Rowohlt, 2001.

Einspräche!: zur Geschichte, Politik und Literatur, Rowohlt, 2001.

Die Geburt der Tragëdie aus dem Krieg: Frankfurter Poetik-Vorlesungen, Rowohlt, 2001.

Mozart's Nachtmusik: Requiem for Three Characters in Two Scenes, translated and adapted by Robert David MacDonald, Oberon (London, England), 2001.

Zwischen Sylt und Wilhelmstrasse: Essays, Gedichte, Reden, Verlag Volk & Welt (Berlin, Germany), 2001.

McKinsey Kommt. Molieres Tartuffe: Zwei Theaterstücke, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (Munich), 2003.

Nietzsches Spazierstock: Gedichte, Tragikomdie "Heil Hitler!," Prosa, Rowohlt, 2004.

EDITOR

Wilhelm Busch, Saemtliche Werke, und eine Auswahl der Skizzen und Gemaelde, Volume I, S. Mohn, 1959, Volume II, C. Bertelsmann, 1960.

Wilhelm Busch, Lustige Streiche in Versen und Farben, Ruetten & Loening, 1960.

Wilhelm Busch, Saemtliche Bildergeschichten mit 3380 Zichnungen und Fachsimilies, Ruetten & Leoning, 1961.

Liebe in unserer Zeit: Sechzehn Erzählungen (short story anthology), two volumes, Bertelsmann Lesering, 1961.

Theodor Storm, Am grauen Meer, Mosaik-Verlag, 1962.

Die grossen Meister: Deutsche Erzaehler des 20. Jahrhunderts (short story anthology), two volumes, Bertelsmann Lesering, 1964.

Des Lebens Uberfluss, R. Mohn, c. 1969.

Ruhm und Ehre, Bertelsmann, 1970.

Oscar Tellgmann, Kaisers Zeiten: Bilder einer Epoche, Herbig, 1973.

Also editor of Otto Flake's Die Deutschen, 1962, and Thomas Mann's Dichter und Herrscher, 1963.

OTHER

Author of plays The Employer, 1965, and Anatomy of Revolution, 1969.

ADAPTATIONS: Eine Liebe in Deutschland was adapted as the film A Love in Germany, starring Hanna Schygulla, directed by Andrzei Wajda, Triumph Films, 1984; Der Stellvertreter (The Deputy,) was adapted as the award-winning film Amen, directed by Constantin Costa-Gavras, Kino International, 2002.

SIDELIGHTS: Critics almost universally found that no previous post-World War II dramatic work shook the conscience of Europe as did Rolf Hochhuth's The Deputy, originally published in German as Der Stellvertreter. The impact was equated with that, in their times, of Emile Zola's letter "J'Accuse" and Erich Maria Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front. It was propitious in timing, arriving on the scene shortly after Adolf Eichmann's war crimes trial and between sessions of the Second Vatican Council.

The thesis of Hochhuth's play is that Pope Pius XII should have spoken out more strongly and firmly than he did against the mass executions of the Jews during the Nazi period in Germany, especially against die Endlösung —the Final Solution. The dramatis personae are not for the most part, at least according to Hochhuth, actual historical people. The main protagonist, Jesuit Father Riccardo Fontana, is considered the most fictional character, although the writer was inspired in creating the role by the martyred Father Maximilian Kolbe—Prisoner Number 16670 in Auschwitz—and Bernhard Lichtenberg, prelate of St. Heldwig's Cathedral in Berlin; the work is dedicated to them.

Hochhuth has explained that he became interested in the subject on which he has written because, as a member of the young generation in Germany, he shared a great feeling of guilt about the past which he could not explain, but about which he felt he must seek to become informed. One of the books that stimulated him to begin work on the play was The Final Solution, by Gerald Reitlinger. After the death of Pope Pius XII, he spent three years in research preparation, three months in Rome, although secret Vatican archives were open to researchers only to the year 1846. Hochhuth also studied the Nuremburg Trial and Wehrmacht archives. A "Sidelights on History," composed of documentation and stage directions, was appended to the end of the published version of the play.

Complete performance of The Deputy would take six to eight hours; most actual performances last from two to three hours, and adaptations vary in different cities and languages. Hochhuth once commented that "the most comprehensive version was shown in Vienna, the shortest in Berlin, the most modern in Paris."

Demonstrations accompanied many performances of the play. Especially intense was the one at the Theatre Athenee in Paris, where protesters showered pamphlets on the audience, threw stench bombs, and even clambered onto the stage. On the Broadway premiere, about one hundred and fifty persons demonstrated outside the Brooks Atkinson Theater, including members of the American Nazi party who carried placards reading "Ban the Hate Show"; the doors of the theater were locked during intermission as a protective measure.

Producer and director Herman Shumlin reported that efforts were made to prevent presentation of The Deputy in the United States. Billy Rose withdrew his cooperation from the production. An interfaith group, however, headed by Edward Keating, editor of Ramparts—then a Roman Catholic paper for laymen—asked the public to regard the play with an open mind; Catholic reaction generally was more restrained than might have been expected, and, in some cases, contrite.

The play itself—its dramaturgy, blank verse and free rhythms—has not been considered by critics as exceptional. In fact, it has been described as old-fashioned, using late nineteenth-century techniques in weak German classical tradition. Hochhuth was, however, credited with recreating the flavor of Nazi jargon. A coincidental relationship between it and Johann von Schiller's Don Carlos was noted. It was also compared to Bertolt Brecht's Heilige Johanne der Schlachthofe.

Although critics tended to feel that The Deputy leaves a good bit to be desired artistically, most also saw other meaningful aspects to the work. As David Boroff wrote in the National Observer: "Though it is both flawed and arguable, it has restored seriousness to the Broadway theater. Not since Death of a Salesman or The Diary of Anne Frank have audiences been so profoundly shaken." Walter Kerr, drama critic for the New York Herald Tribune, also thought that the work is deficient as a drama. But he, too, commented: "We are also left with the aftermath of The Deputy, making a clamor in the world which may, hopefully, become the equivalent of a call to prayer. Any virtues the work possesses are extra-theatrical. They may indeed become virtues."

The controversy that ensued over the production of Hochhuth's second play Soldaten: Nekrolog auf Genf, published in English as The Soldiers, was even greater that that surrounding his first. On April 24, 1967, against the protests of literary manager Kenneth Tynan and artistic director Laurence Olivier, who wanted the play performed, London's National Theatre decided that The Soldiers was unsuitable for production because it allegedly maligned certain notable Englishmen, principally Sir Winston Churchill. In the play, Hochhuth suggests that the death of General Wladyslaw Sikorski, the Polish exile leader during World War II, was not accidental but rather the result of the machinations of the British secret service and was, furthermore, the result of a plot about which Churchill had full knowledge. The Lord Chamberlain, Britain's theatrical censor at the time, suggested that he would allow the play to be publicly performed only if the relatives of the characters in the play gave their consent.

In 2002, French filmmaker Constantin Costa-Gavras, known for blending political content and high excitement, adapted The Deputy as the film Amen, in an effort to "explore the failure of Pope Pius XII to protest Hitler's extermination of the Jews during World War II," according to Joseph Cunneen in a review for National Catholic Reporter. But Cunneen found that "despite the urgency of its subject, the dialogue of Amen has little emotional power; its most suggestive images are the recurring shots of freight trains rolling through the German countryside. Making Amen as an English-language film may have been a shrewd commercial decision, but since most of the actors are not at home with the language, their words lack clarity and immediacy" and that like "The Deputy, which caused an international uproar when it appeared in 1963, Amen raises lots of still important questions, but somewhat softens the pope's failure by seeing it as part of a wider indifference to the Holocaust by those who knew what was going on."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 4, 1975, Volume 11, 1979, Volume 18, 1981.

Der Streit un Hochhuths "Stellvertreter," Basilius Presse, 1963.

Summa Inuria; oder, Durfte der Papst schweigen? Hochhuths "Stellvertreter" in der oeffentlichen Kritik, Rowohlt, 1963.

Taeni, Rainer, Rolf Hochhuth, translated by R. W. Last, Wolff, 1977.

Ward, M. E., Rolf Hochhuth, G. K. Hall (Boston, MA), 1977.

PERIODICALS

Catholic Insight, April, 2002, p. 23.

Chicago Tribune, January 30, 1985.

Christian Science Monitor, May 6, 1968; July 1, 1972.

Commentary, March, 1964.

Commonweal, February 28, 1964; March 20, 1964; May 31, 1968.

Detroit Free Press, March 29, 1964; September 24, 1967.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), February 26, 1968.

Life, March 13, 1964; June 7, 1968.

Listener, October 12, 1967.

Los Angeles Times, November 15, 1984.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, June 22, 1980.

Midstream, April, 2001, p. 14.

Nation, March 16, 1964; May 20, 1968; August 25, 1969; August 17, 1970.

National Catholic Reporter, February 14, 2003, p. 15.

National Observer, March 2, 1964; March 4, 1968.

New Leader, March 16, 1964.

New Republic, March 14, 1964; December 10, 1984, p. 75.

New Statesman, October 4, 1963; July 22, 2002, p. 44.

Newsweek, March 2, 1964; March 11, 1968; January 20, 1969; June 1, 1970.

New Yorker, December 28, 1963; March 7, 1964; May 11, 1968.

New York Herald Tribune, February 27, 1964.

New York Review of Books, March 19, 1964.

New York Times, February 27, 1964; February 28, 1964; February 12, 1967; April 26, 1967; September 11, 1967; December 14, 1968; November 9, 1984; March 11, 1993; June 25, 1995.

New York Times Book Review, March 1, 1964.

New York Times Magazine, November 19, 1967.

Observer Review, October 15, 1967; May 12, 1968; October 27, 1968; December 15, 1968.

Saturday Evening Post, February 29, 1964.

Saturday Night, March, 1968.

Saturday Review, March 14, 1964.

Spectator, October 4, 1963; December 20, 1968.

Theatre Journal, March, 1994, p. 124.

Time, November 1, 1963; March 6, 1964; May 10, 1968.

Times (London, England), April 10, 1980; November 9, 1984; November 12, 1984; May 10, 1985; October 7, 1986.

Times Literary Supplement, May 28, 1970; May 2, 1980.

Transatlantic Review, autumn, 1968.