The Deputy

''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. 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. The ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' assesses the play as "a drama that presented a critical, unhistorical picture of Pius XII" and Hochhuth's depiction of the pope having been indifferent to the Nazi genocide as "lacking credible substantiation."

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.

Production history

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. 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). 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. 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." 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.

''The Deputy'' has been produced in more than 80 cities worldwide since. 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.

Historical models

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. Prelate Bernhard Lichtenberg, the dome provost of St. Hedwig in Berlin was imprisoned because he included Jews in his prayers and asked the Gestapo for sharing the fate of the Jews in the east. Lichtenberg died on the transport to Dachau. 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 rather novel, 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" or, with Teodor Adorno, that "poetic art after Auschwitz is a barbarity", 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 (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 and again a book by Walter Kaufmann from the following year. 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.)

Plot

Act I

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