Word: hochhuth
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...moral analogies prevail today. The choice of man to sneak out or to remain silent is not only for history. One could easily change the characters of Hochhuth's play and retain only the moral charge. We would then have a play about religious leaders in America confronted with the choice of speaking out or remaining silent on any aspect of man's inherent rights...
...rather ironic that a person like Rolf Hochhuth cannot wait till the "Last Judgment" to discover truth! Why should he pour more salt on the wounds of World War II by questioning the integrity of a dead man who did so much good for humanity...
Burning Anxiety. Such legitimate attacks on Hochhuth's portrayal of the Pope sidestep the key question raised by his play: Why did Pius XII, who condemned the aerial bombing of civilian centers and the postwar aggressions of Communism, not explicitly attack the liquidation of Europe's Jews? The issue has intrigued many modern historians, since Pius clearly detested Hitler's totalitarianism as much as he loved the German people. He helped draft Pius XI's encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge (With Burning Sorrow), which condemned Nazi racism in 1937. When the Germans organized a roundup of Roman...
...Martyrs. The hero of what Hochhuth calls "a Christian tragedy" is a saintly, selfless Jesuit, Father Riccardo Fontana-a fictional character modeled on the two Catholic priests martyred by the Nazis to whom Hochhuth dedicated his play. Fontana, who comes from an aristocratic Roman family with impeccable Vatican connections, is assigned to the office of the papal nuncio in Berlin. There, in a scene derived from an actual incident of 1943, a secretly anti-Nazi storm trooper named Rudolf Gerstein breaks in to tell the nuncio that Jews are being systematically exterminated at death camps in Eastern Europe. The horrified...
Silence & Courage. Hochhuth's answer is that calculated prudence is appropriate for a diplomat, but not for a man with the awesome responsibility of being Christ's earthly representative. In Der Stellvertreter, Hochhuth contrasts papal silence with the action of Denmark's King Christian, who helped forestall Nazi persecution by vowing to wear the Star of David if his country's Jews had to, and with Munster's Bishop Clemens August von Galen, whose fiery sermons ended the Nazi euthanasia campaign in his city...