Der Stellvertreter The Representative (UK) The Deputy (US) | |
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Written by | Rolf Hochhuth |
Original language | German |
The Deputy, a Christian tragedy (German: Der Stellvertreter. Ein christliches Trauerspiel ), also published in English as The Representative, is a controversial 1963 play by Rolf Hochhuth which portrayed Pope Pius XII as having failed to take action or speak out against the Holocaust. It has been translated into more than twenty languages. [1] The play's implicit censure of a venerable if controversial pope has led to numerous counterattacks, of which one of the latest is the 2007 allegation that Hochhuth was the dupe of a KGB disinformation campaign, later confirmed by both the Venona Project and Mitrokhin Files in declassification of the Soviet disinformation campaign Operation Seat 12. The Encyclopædia Britannica assesses the play as "a drama that presented a critical, unhistorical picture of Pius XII" [2] and Hochhuth's depiction of the pope having been indifferent to the Nazi genocide as "lacking credible substantiation." [3] However, it has since been discovered that Pope Pius XII seems to have known about concentration camps. [4]
The first English translation by Robert David MacDonald was published as The Representative, by Methuen in Britain in 1963. In America a second translation by Richard Winston and Clara Winston was published as The Deputy by Grove in New York, 1964. A letter from Albert Schweitzer to Hochhuth's German publisher serves as the foreword to the US edition. A film version titled Amen. was made by the Greek-born French filmmaker Costa-Gavras in 2002.
The play was first performed at West Berlin's "Freie Volksbühne" (Free People's Theater) on February 20, 1963 under the direction of Erwin Piscator. [5] Within the same year, the play was produced at additional theatres in West Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Great Britain, Denmark, Finland and France.
The play received its first English production in London by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych Theatre in September 1963. It was directed by Clifford Williams with Alan Webb/Eric Porter as Pius XII, Alec McCowen as Father Fontana, and Ian Richardson.
A condensed version prepared by American poet Jerome Rothenberg opened on Broadway on February 26, 1964 at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre with Emlyn Williams as Pius XII and Jeremy Brett as Father Fontana (replaced on May 24 by David Carradine). [6] The producer Herman Shumlin had offered to release any actors who were troubled by the controversy surrounding the play. However, all of the actors remained with the production. The play ran for 316 performances. Herman Shumlin received the 1964 Tony Award as the "Best Producer (Dramatic)" for his Broadway production of The Deputy.
Author Rolf Hochhuth had originally prohibited a production of his play in Eastern European theatres out of apprehension that Eastern European governments could exploit the play for a striking anti-Catholic interpretation. [7] This possibility troubled Hochhuth to such an extent that he later wrote "In choosing a Jesuit for my tragic hero I strove to condemn the sin and not the sinner - that is, not the Church but its silence - and to exemplify, after a Kierkegaardian fashion, the enormous difficulty of living up to the Catholic creed and the immense nobility of spirit of those who are capable even of coming close. To read the play as anti-Catholic is not to read it at all." [8] [9] The play was first produced in Eastern Europe almost three years after its premiere at the National Theatre in Belgrade in Yugoslavia in January 1966 and at the National Theatre in Bratislava in Czechoslovakia on February 12, 1966. The first production in East Germany took place on February 20, 1966 at Greifswald Theatre. [10]
The Deputy has been produced in more than 80 cities worldwide since. [11] In the English-speaking world, the play has since been revived by the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow in 1986 and at the Finborough Theatre, London, in August 2006.
Rolf Hochhuth has referred to several historical models for the figures of his play. Among these persons are Pater Maximilian Kolbe (prisoner Nr. 16670 in Auschwitz) who sacrificed himself for the Catholic family man Franciszek Gajowniczek. Another model is the priest Bernhard Lichtenberg, provost of the cathedral of St. Hedwig in Berlin; he was imprisoned because he included Jews in his prayers and asked the Gestapo to share the fate of the Jews being sent to the east. Lichtenberg died on the transport to Dachau. A character in the play is Kurt Gerstein, an official at the "Institute of Hygiene" of the Waffen-SS, tried to inform the international public about the extermination camps. After the Second World War he produced the "Gerstein Report" that was used at the Nuremberg Trials.
In subtitling his play ein christliches trauerspiel, Hochhuth links his unusual, pseudo-journalistic approach (complete with stage directions well in excess even of Shaw's which tell us not only how a character looks and acts but what his or her life is like today - that is, in 1963, 21 years after the action of the play) to the tradition of Sophocles and Shakespeare. Hochhuth sought to refute two notions. It had been fashionable to claim (with Nietzsche) that "there can be no tragedy today" [12] or, with Theodor W. Adorno, that "poetic art after Auschwitz is a barbarity", [13] and Hochhuth does not believe modernity and tragedy incompatible. He also specifically noted it was a "Christian" tragedy in response to the view that tragedy was incompatible with Christianity, which was voiced by Tolstoy [14] (in his conversations with Gorkiy) and elaborated 8 years before Hochhuth's play in a much-publicized article by Laurence Michel which claimed that "Christian tragedy" was a contradiction in terms [15] and again a book by Walter Kaufmann (philosopher) from the following year. [16] In linking "The Deputy" to both views, Hochhuth sought to overturn both presuppositions about what constituted a tragedy (after reading "The Deputy" and "Soldiers," and corresponding with Hochhuth, Kaufmann recanted his position. [17] )
The play opens with a discussion between Gerstein and the Papal Nuncio of Berlin over whether Pope Pius XII should have abrogated the Reichskonkordat to protest the actions of the Nazi government of Germany. Father Riccardo Fontana, the priest protagonist, and Gerstein meet for the first time.
A number of German aristocrats, industrialists, and government officials (including Adolf Eichmann) spend an evening in an underground bowling alley. Despite the commonplace setting the scene is rather macabre: conversations alternate between lighthearted pleasantries and equally dismissive discussions of the treatment of Jews. An icy Catholic industrialist—played by the same actor as Pius—defends his use of slave labor.
The final scene ends with Riccardo meeting Gerstein at his apartment; at the latter's urging, he agrees to trade clothes and documents with a Jew, Jacobson, Gerstein has been hiding in order to help him escape.
Act II repeatedly attempts to drive home the point that Hitler feared Pius more than any of his contemporaries and that Pius's commercial interests preclude him from condemning Hitler.
One of the Cardinals argues that the Nazis are the last bulwark that remains against Soviet domination of Europe.
As the Jews are rounded up for deportations "under the Pope's windows," Riccardo declares "doing nothing is as bad as taking part [...] God can forgive a hangman for such work, but not a priest, not the Pope!" [18] and a German officer comments that the Pope has given "friendly audiences to thousands of members of the German army". [19] Riccardo first voices his idea to follow the example of Bernhard Lichtenberg and to follow the Jews to the death camps in the East, and possibly to share in their fate.
Pius, with a "cold, smiling face," "aristocratic coldness," and an "icy glint" in his eyes [20] voices his concerns about the Vatican's financial assets and the Allied bombing of factories in Italy. Pius verbally reiterates his commitment to help the Jews but states that he must keep silent "'ad maioram mala vitanda" (to avoid greater evil). [21] When angrily questioned by Riccardo, Pius pontificates on the geopolitical importance of a strong Germany vis-a-vis the Soviet threat. [22] Ultimately, Riccardo shames the Pope into dictating a statement for public release; however, its wording is so vague that all are confident it will be ignored by the Germans. Riccardo views this as akin to the Crusades, a sin that forever stains Mother Church, and feels called on to prove to God that the Church is indeed worthy of his trust: " 'If God once promised Abraham that he would not destroy Sodom if only ten just men dwelt in it...maybe...God will still forgive the Church if even only a few of its servants - like Lichtenberg - stand with the persecuted...The Pope's silence burdens the Church with a guilt for which we have to atone...Not Auschwitz is at stake now! The idea of the papacy must be preserved pure in eternity, even if it is briefly embodied by an Alexander VI, or a -'" [23] Riccardo breaks off, but clearly he, and possibly Hochhuth, want to imply a comparison between the Borgia Pope (Alexander VI) and Pius XII.
Riccardo dons the yellow star and joins deportees to die at Auschwitz, where the rest of the act takes place. He is confronted by the Doctor, who is otherwise not named but closely resembles Josef Mengele. The Doctor is a nihilist to whom "Auschwitz refutes creator, creation and the creature. . . cursed is he who creates life. I cremate life." [24] He takes Riccardo under his protection, hoping that the church will help him escape the hangman after Germany loses the war. Gerstein appears at the camp in an unsanctioned attempt to rescue Riccardo. Unfortunately in the end they are found out, and Riccardo momentarily loses in faith and violates his vow not to take up arms in order to shoot the maleficent Doctor, but is himself gunned down before he can pull the trigger. Gerstein is taken into custody, and Riccardo follows in a long tradition of tragic figures by showing himself partly redeemed with his dying declaration, a whispered "'in hora mortis meae voca me'" [25] (Latin, and modally ambiguous: one could read subjunctive :"in the hour of my death may He call unto me" or imperative "in the hour of my death, call unto me!" [ disputed – discuss ] In either case, Riccardo does not die entirely confident of salvation, which would lessen his status as a tragic hero.
The play ends with a quotation from German ambassador Weizsäcker:
Since further action on the Jewish problem is probably not to be expected here in Rome, it may be assumed that this question, so troublesome to German-Vatican relations, has been disposed of. [26]
The premiere of Rolf Hochhuth's "Christian tragedy" in West Berlin's "Theater am Kurfürstendamm" (temporary home of the "Freie Volksbühne Berlin") on February 20, 1963 caused the largest and most heated theatre controversy in postwar Germany. The theatre production led to international diplomatic complications. Further productions of Hochhuth's play brought about conflicts and turmoil in several European cities. [27] Hannah Arendt also discusses the play (and public reaction to it) in her 1964 essay "The Deputy: Guilt by Silence?".
In the assessment of the Encyclopædia Britannica , the depiction of the Pope as indifferent to the Holocaust "lacks credible substantiation". The encyclopedia notes "though Pius's wartime public condemnations of racism and genocide were cloaked in generalities, he did not turn a blind eye to the suffering but chose to use diplomacy to aid the persecuted. It is impossible to know if a more forthright condemnation of the Holocaust would have proved more effective in saving lives, though it probably would have better assured his reputation." [3]
Michael Phayer notes that during the Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church a direct reference was made by Bishop Josef Stangl to Hochhuth's play when he declared to the council: "If we speak in the name of God, in the name of Jesus Christ, as the deputies of the Lord, then our message must be [a clear] 'Yes, Yes! [or] 'No, no' - the truth, not tactics". [28] His "moving address" made a significant contribution "to reversing the church's anti-semitism" (see Nostra aetate ). [29]
It has been said that it was Bishop Alois Hudal who provided Rolf Hochhuth with the image of the "heartless, money-grasping pontiff". [30] Hudal has been described as "the most notorious pro-Nazi bishop in the entire Catholic Church". He was appointed to a Pontifical commission where he assisted Nazi war criminals like Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele, Franz Stangl, Eduard Roschmann, and many others to escape justice. After he became "a little too public" with these activities he was sidelined by Pope Pius and, according to Hansjakob Stelhe, "took his revenge" by providing Hochhuth with his portrait of Pius. [31]
In 2007 a high ranking intelligence officer and defector from the Eastern Bloc, Ion Mihai Pacepa, stated that in February 1960, Nikita Khrushchev authorized a covert plan (known as Seat 12) to discredit the Vatican, with Pope Pius XII as the prime target. [32] [33] [34] [35] As part of that plan Pacepa alleged that General Ivan Agayants, chief of the KGB's disinformation department, created the outline for what was to become the play. [32] [34] [36] [37] Pacepa's story has not been corroborated; the national paper Frankfurter Allgemeine opined that Hochhuth who had been an unknown publisher's employee until 1963 "did not require any KGB assistance for his one-sided presentation of history". [38] However, German historian Michael F. Feldkamp called Pacepa's account "wholly credible. It fits like a missing piece in the puzzle of communist propaganda and disinformation aimed at discrediting the Catholic Church and its Pontiff." [39] English historian, Michael Burleigh, stated "Soviet attempts to smear Pius had actually commenced as soon as the Red Army crossed into Catholic Poland", noting that the Soviets "hired a militantly anti-religious propagandist, Mikhail Markovich Sheinmann" - "Hochhuth's play...drew heavily upon Sheinmann's lies and falsehoods..." [40]
Rowohlt Verlag sold the worldwide rights for a film adaptation for 300,000 Deutsche Mark in April 1963 to the French producer Georges de Beauregard and his production company "Rome Paris Films". [41] The Deputy was eventually made as the film Amen. by the Greek-born French filmmaker Costa-Gavras in 2002.
Pope Pius XII was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 2 March 1939 until his death in October 1958. Before his election to the papacy, he served as secretary of the Department of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, papal nuncio to Germany, and Cardinal Secretary of State, in which capacity he worked to conclude treaties with various European and Latin American nations, including the Reichskonkordat treaty with the German Reich.
Rolf Hochhuth was a German author and playwright, best known for his 1963 drama The Deputy, which insinuates Pope Pius XII's indifference to Hitler's extermination of the Jews, and he remained a controversial figure both for his plays and other public comments and for his 2005 defense of British Holocaust denier David Irving.
Catholic clergy involvement with the Ustaše covers the role of the Croatian Catholic Church in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), a Nazi puppet state created on the territory of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia in 1941.
Aloisius Joseph Muench was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Bishop of Fargo from 1935 to 1959, and as Apostolic Nuncio to Germany from 1951 to 1959. He was elevated to the cardinalate in 1959.
Kurt Gerstein was a German SS officer and head of technical disinfection services of the Hygiene-Institut der Waffen-SS. After witnessing mass murders in the Belzec and Treblinka Nazi extermination camps, Gerstein gave a detailed report to Swedish diplomat Göran von Otter, as well as to Swiss diplomats, members of the Roman Catholic Church with contacts to Pope Pius XII, and to the Dutch government-in-exile, in an effort to inform the international community about the Holocaust as it was happening. In 1945, following his surrender, he wrote the Gerstein Report covering his experience of the Holocaust. He died of an alleged suicide while in French custody.
Hitler's Pope is a book published in 1999 by the British journalist and author John Cornwell that examines the actions of Eugenio Pacelli, who became Pope Pius XII, before and during the Nazi era, and explores the charge that he assisted in the legitimization of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime in Germany, through the pursuit of a Reichskonkordat in 1933. The book is critical of Pius' conduct during the Second World War, arguing that he did not do enough, or speak out enough, against the Holocaust. Cornwell argues that Pius's entire career as the nuncio to Germany, Cardinal Secretary of State, and Pope, was characterized by a desire to increase and centralize the power of the Papacy, and that he subordinated opposition to the Nazis to that goal. He further argues that Pius was antisemitic and that this stance prevented him from caring about the European Jews.
Amen. is a 2002 historical war drama film directed and co-written by Costa-Gavras. Based on the play The Deputy by Rolf Hochhuth, the film examines the political and diplomatic relationship between the Vatican and Nazi Germany during World War II. It stars Ulrich Tukur, Mathieu Kassovitz, Sebastian Koch, Ulrich Mühe, Ion Caramitru, and Marcel Iureş. It was a co-production between French, German, and Romanian studios.
The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis is a 2005 book by American historian and Rabbi David G. Dalin. It was published by Regnery Publishing.
Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, often abbreviated Actes or ADSS, is an eleven-volume collection of documents from the Vatican historical archives, related to the papacy of Pope Pius XII during World War II.
Robert Leiber, S.J. was a close advisor to Pope Pius XII, a Jesuit priest from Germany, and Professor for Church History at the Gregorian University in Rome from 1930 to 1960. Leiber was, according to Pius's biographer Susan Zuccotti, "throughout his entire papacy his private secretary and closest advisor".
Pope Pius XII and Russia describes relations of the Vatican with the Soviet Union, Russia, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Eastern Catholic Churches resulting in the eradication of the Church in most parts of the Soviet Union during the Stalinist era. Most persecutions of the Church occurred during the pontificate of Pope Pius XII.
Cesare Vincenzo Orsenigo was Apostolic Nuncio to Germany from 1930 to 1945, during the rise of Nazi Germany and World War II. Along with the German ambassador to the Vatican, Diego von Bergen and later Ernst von Weizsäcker, Orsenigo was the direct diplomatic link between Pope Pius XI and Pope Pius XII and the Nazi regime, meeting several times with Adolf Hitler directly and frequently with other high-ranking officials and diplomats.
The papacy of Pius XII began on 2 March 1939 and continued to 9 October 1958, covering the period of the Second World War and the Holocaust, during which millions of Jews were murdered by Adolf Hitler's Germany. Before becoming pope, Cardinal Pacelli served as a Vatican diplomat in Germany and as Vatican Secretary of State under Pius XI. His role during the Nazi period has been closely scrutinised and criticised. His supporters argue that Pius employed diplomacy to aid the victims of the Nazis during the war and, through directing his Church to provide discreet aid to Jews and others, saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Pius maintained links to the German Resistance, and shared intelligence with the Allies, but at the same time he developed alliances with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy and even arranged secret negotiations with Hitler's envoys. His strongest public condemnation of genocide was, however, considered inadequate by the Allied Powers, while the Nazis viewed him as an Allied sympathizer who had dishonoured his policy of Vatican neutrality.
Pope Pius XII's response to the Roman razzia, or mass deportation of Jews, on October 16, 1943, is a significant issue relating to Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust. Under Mussolini, no policy of abduction of Jews had been implemented in Italy. Following the capitulation of Italy in 1943, Nazi forces invaded and occupied much of the country, and began deportations of Jews to extermination camps. Pius XII protested at diplomatic levels, while several thousand Jews found refuge in Catholic networks, institutions and homes across Italy, including in Vatican City and Pope Pius' Summer Residence. The Catholic Church and some historians have credited this rescue in large part to the direction of Pope Pius XII. However, historian Susan Zuccotti researched the matter in detail and states that there is "considerable evidence of papal disapproval of the hiding of Jews and other fugitives in Vatican properties."
Pope Pius XII's 1942 Christmas address was a speech delivered by Pope Pius XII over Vatican Radio on Christmas 1942. It is notable for its denunciation of the extermination of people on the basis of race, and followed the commencement of the Nazi Final Solution program to exterminate the Jews of Europe. The significance of the denunciation is a matter of scholarly debate.
The public statements of Pope Pius XII on the Holocaust, or lack thereof, are one of the most controversial elements of the historical debate about Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust. Pius XII's statements have been scrutinized as much, if not more, than his actions during the same period. Pius XII's statements, both public and private, are quite well documented in the Vatican Secret Archives; eleven volumes of documents from his papacy were published between 1965 and 1981 in Actes et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale.
The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 is a book written by American historian Michael Phayer on the topic of Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust. It was published in 2000.
Pius XII, The Holocaust, and the Cold War is a 2008 book by historian Michael Phayer which makes use of documents that had been released under US President Bill Clinton's 1997 executive order declassifying wartime and postwar documents.
Seat 12, also known as Operation Seat 12, was a left wing disinformation campaign conducted by the Soviet Union during the Cold War to discredit the moral authority of the Vatican because of its outspoken anticommunism. claims of the operations existence were first made in 2007 by Ion Mihai Pacepa, a general who headed the Romanian secret service before defecting to the West in 1978.
The Pius War refer to debates over the legacy of Pope Pius XII and his actions during the Holocaust. The phrase was first coined in a 2004 book of the same name.