Rolf Hochhuth
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Rolf Hochhuth (German:
Life and career
Youth
Hochhuth was born in Eschwege, and was descended from a Protestant Hessian middle class family. His father was the owner of a shoe‐factory, which became bankrupt in the Depression.[2] During World War II, he was a member of the Deutsches Jungvolk, a junior subdivision of the Hitler Youth; membership in the group had become legally compulsory in 1939.[3] In 1948 he did an apprenticeship as a bookseller. Between 1950 and 1955 he worked in bookshops in Marburg, Kassel and Munich. At the same time he attended university lectures as a guest student and began with early attempts at writing fiction. Between 1955 and 1963 he was an editor at a major West-German publishing house.
The Deputy
Hochhuth's drama, The Deputy (1963), was originally entitled Der Stellvertreter. Ein christliches Trauerspiel (The Deputy, a Christian Tragedy, translated by Richard and Clara Winston, 1964), the play caused a great deal of controversy because of its criticism of Pope Pius XII's role in World War II. The play was subsequently published in the UK in Robert David MacDonald's translation as The Representative (1965).
Its publisher Ed Keating and journalist Warren Hinckle, who themselves considered it "dramaturgically flawed," organized a committee to defend the play as a matter of free speech.[4] In 2007, Ion Mihai Pacepa, a former Romanian spymaster, alleged that the play was part of a KGB campaign to discredit Pius XII.[5][6] A leading German newspaper opined "that Hochhuth did not require any KGB assistance for his one-sided presentation of history."[7][8]
The unedited version of the play would have run some eight or nine hours. As a result, each production adapted the text in its own way. No audience saw it in its original form.
The play was first performed in Berlin on 20 February 1963 under the direction of Erwin Piscator. It received its first English production in London by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych Theatre in 1963 in a translation by Robert David MacDonald. It was directed by Clifford Williams with Alan Webb or Eric Porter as Pius XII, Alec McCowen as Father Fontana and Ian Richardson. In the United Kingdom it has since been revived at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, in 1986, and at the Finborough Theatre, London, in 2006.
An abridged version opened on
The Deputy was made into a film
Soldiers and Sikorski crash theories
Hochhuth's next play,
That aspect of the play has overshadowed Hochhuth's conceit that the play would contribute to a debate on the ethics of the
Controversy arose in Britain in 1967 when the intended premiere at Britain's National Theatre Company was cancelled, due to the intervention of the National Theatre board, despite the support for the play by literary manager Kenneth Tynan and Laurence Olivier, under pressure from Joan Plowright, his wife. At the time of the controversy in Britain, Irving was the only figure who gave his "unequivocal" support for Hochhuth's thesis; others consulted by Tynan considered it highly improbable.[13] The play was produced shortly afterwards in the West End with John Colicos in the cast. The English translation was again by Robert David MacDonald. In the UK, the play was seen on tour in the early 1990s and was revived most recently at the Finborough Theatre, London, in 2004.
Sommer 14 - A Dance of Death
Sommer 14 - A Dance of Death had its UK premiere (and world premiere in English) in August 2014 at the Finborough Theatre in London. It was directed by Christopher Loscher for Cerberus Theatre.
A Love in Germany and the Filbinger Affaire
In 1978, his novel A Love in Germany about an affair between a Polish POW and a German woman in World War II stirred up a debate about the past of Hans Filbinger, Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg, who had been a Navy lawyer and judge at the end of World War II. The affair culminated in Filbinger's resignation.
For A Love in Germany, Hochhuth was awarded the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis in 1980. In 1983 Andrzej Wajda, who would later win an Honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement, made the story into the film Eine Liebe in Deutschland.
Alan Turing
His 1987 drama Alan Turing featured one of the fathers of modern computer science, who had made significant contributions to breaking German ciphers during World War II. The play also covered Turing's homosexuality, discovery of which resulted in his loss of career, court-ordered chemical castration, depression, and suicide.
McKinsey controversy
In 2004, he again caused controversy with the play McKinsey is Coming, which raises the questions of unemployment, social justice and the "right to work". A passage in which he put the chairman of the Deutsche Bank in one line with leading businessmen who had been murdered by left-wing terrorists and also with Gessler, the villainous bailiff killed by William Tell, was widely seen as advocating, or at least excusing, violence against leading economic figures. Hochhuth vigorously denied this.
Anti-Semitism allegations
In March 2005, Hochhuth became embroiled in controversy when, during an interview with the German weekly
Paul Spiegel, President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, argued that with these statements Hochhuth himself was denying the Holocaust. After weeks of uproar, Hochhuth issued an apology.[16]
Casual allegations
On opening of the archives of the Stasi, the East German Security Service, a report emerged according to which Hochhuth had casually made the allegation that Timothy Garton Ash, at that time working on a history dissertation in East Berlin, was a "British spy". The book by Garton Ash about how he himself had been surveilled details how such allegations in other cases had major consequences for the involved individuals.[17]
Works
- Plays
- The Deputy, a Christian Tragedy (1962)
- Soldiers, Necrology on Geneva (1967)
- Guerrillas (1970)
- The Midwife (1972)
- Death of a Hunter (1977)[18]
- The Survivor (1981)
- Alan Turing (1987)
- Wessis in Weimar (1993)
- McKinsey is Coming (2004)
- Heil Hitler! (2007)[19]
- Sommer 14 (2014?)
- Novels
- A Love in Germany (1978)
Hochhuth also collaborated with scripts for cinema and television:
- Berliner Antigone (1968)
- Élo Antigoné (1968)
- Ärztinnen (1984)
- Effis Nacht (1998)
- A Love in Germany (1983)
References
- ^ "Dramatiker Rolf Hochhuth ist tot" (in German). Süddeutsche Zeitung. 14 May 2020. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
- ^ "An Interview With Rolf Hochhuth", The New York Times, March 1, 1964
- ^ “Second Execution Order to the Law on the Hitler Youth” (March 25, 1939), in German History in Documents and Images; accessed April 29, 2023.
- ^ Warren Hinckle, "The Year They Tried To Block "The Deputy" (Excerpt from If You Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade, 1974), The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities, Volume XIII, Number 3, Fall, 1997.
- ^ Ion Mihai Pacepa, Moscow’s Assault on the Vatican Archived 5 February 2007 at the Wayback Machine, National Review Online, 25 January 2007.
- ^ Pacepa, Ion Mihai. "Moscow's Assault on the Vatican". National Review. Retrieved 10 December 2020.
- ^ "Heute in den Feuilletons vom 26.04.2007 - Perlentaucher".
- ^ Thomas Brechenmacher, Hochhuths Quellen. War der 'Stellvertreter' vom KGB inspiriert?, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 26 April 2007 (in German)
- ^ Bigsby, Christopher (2006). Remembering and Imagining the Holocaust: The Chain of Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 117.
- ^ a b "Kurt Gerstein".
- ^ "The End of the Pius Wars", Joseph Bottum, First Things Magazine, April 2004, retrieved 1 July 2009
- ^ Oliver King "David Irving arrested in Austria", The Guardian, 17 November 2005
- ^ Nicholas de Jongh Politics, Prudery and Perversity, London: Methuen, 2000, p.169-61, 160.
- ^ Die Würde des Ortes respektieren. Writer Rolf Hochhuth on his proposal for a museum of war bombings, David Irving and Winston Churchill. Interview with Rolf Hochhuth in Junge Freiheit, 18 February 2005. (in German)
- ^ Karl Pfeifer, Rolf Hochhuth: Lob für einen notorischen Holocaustleugner, Hagalil 21-02-2005. The columnist on the Hagalil website notes that Irving made the remark not in response to a "tremendous provocation" but to a paying audience. The speech was screened in a video during the London libel trial. Richard Rampton, counsel for the defendant Deborah Lipstadt, commented [quote back-translated from German]: "Ridicule alone is not enough. You must also be tasteless. You must say things such as: More women died in the backseat of Senator Edward Kennedy's car in Chappaquiddick than in the gas chambers of Auschwitz." (in German)
- ^ Wie ein Blinder von der Farbe - Hochhuth hatte keine Ahnung, N-TV, 25. February 2005 (in German)
- ^ Garton Ash, Timonty (1997). Die Akte Romeo. Germany: Carl Hanser Verlag. p. 155.
- ^ Dunhill, Anne (3 April 2018). "Play: Death of a Hunter". Independent Catholic News. Retrieved 7 September 2020.
- ^ Möller, Barbara (15 January 2007). "Verrückt nach Adolf". Hamburger Abendblatt (in German). Retrieved 20 February 2019.
Bibliography
- Emanuela Barasch-Rubinstein: The Devil, the Saints, and the Church: Reading Hochhuth's The Deputy. New York: P. Lang, 2004.
- Eric Bentley, editor: The Storm Over The Deputy: Essays and Articles about Hochhuth's Explosive Drama. New York: Grove Press, 1964.
- Christopher Bigsby: Remembering and Imagining the Holocaust: The Chain of Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Chapter 3.
- Lucinda Jane Rennison: Rolf Hochhuth's Interpretation of History, and its Effect on the Content, Form and Reception of his Dramatic Work. Durham: University of Durham, 1991.
- Kathleen Tynan: The File on 'Soldiers': Historical Notes on Rolf Hochhuth's Play. London: Battley Bros., [1968].
- Margaret E. Ward: Rolf Hochhuth. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1977.
External links
- Official website (in German)
- Publications by and about Rolf Hochhuth in the catalogue Helveticat of the Swiss National Library
- "Literary estate of Rolf Hochhuth". HelveticArchives. Swiss National Library.