The Deputy

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The Deputy, a Christian tragedy (German: Der Stellvertreter. Ein christliches Trauerspiel), also known as The Representative, is a controversial 1963 drama by Rolf Hochhuth which portrayed Pope Pius XII as a hypocrite who remained silent about The Holocaust. It has been translated into more than twenty langauges.[1]

1 Productions
2 Film adaptation
3 Plot
4 Criticism
5 KGB operation
6 References

[edit] Productions

The play was first staged in Berlin on February 23, 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. It was directed by Clifford Williams with Alan Webb/Eric Porter as Pius XII, Alec McCowen as Father Fontana, and Ian Richardson.

It has since been revived by the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow in 1986 and at the Finborough Theatre, London, in August 2006.

An abridged version opened on Broadway on 26 February 1964 at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre with Emlyn Williams as Pius XII and Jeremy Brett as Father Fontana. The play ran for 316 performances.

[edit] Film adaptation

The Deputy was made into a film Amen. by Costa Gavras in 2002.

[edit] Plot

[edit] Act I

The play opens with a discussion over whether Pope Pius XII should have abrogated the Reichskonkordat to protest the actions of the Nazis.

An icy Catholic industrialist—played by the same actor as Pius—defends his use of slave labor.

[edit] Act II

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.

[edit] Act III

As the Jews are rounded up for deportations "under the Pope's windows," Riccardo Fontana, the priest protagonist, declares "doing nothing is as bad as taking part [...] God can forgive a hangman for such work, but not a priest, not the Pope!"^[1] and a German officer comments that the Pope has given "friendly audiences to thousands of members of the German army.^[2]

[edit] Act IV

Pius, with a "cold, smiling face," "aristocratic coldness," and an "icy glint" in his eyes^[3]voices his concerns about the Vatican's financial assets and the Allied bombing of factories in Italy, worrying that the bombing will create impoverished workers who ultimately will become anarchists. Pius reiterates his commitment to help the Jews while keeping silent "ad maioram mala vitanda" (to avoid greater evil).^[4]

When angrily questioned by Fontana, Pius pontificates on the geopolitical importance of a strong Germany vis-a-vis the Soviet threat.^[5]

[edit] Act V

Fontana dons the yellow star and joins deportees to die at Auschwitz, where the rest of the act takes place, ending with a quotation from German ambassador Weizsacker:

"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."^[6]

[edit] Criticism

Books such as Dr. Joseph Lichten's, A Question of Judgment (1963), written in response to The Deputy, defended Pius XII's actions during the war. Lichten labelled any criticism of the Pope's actions during World War II was "a stupefying paradox" and said, "no one who reads the record of Pius XII's actions on behalf of Jews can subscribe to Hochhuth's accusation."

[edit] KGB operation

In an article on National Review Onine, former Romanian DIE intelligence chief Ion Mihai Pacepa revealed that The Deputy was secretly commisioned by the KGB.^[7] Pacepa describes the KGB's efforts to discredit the Church's authority in Western Europe after World War II, which focused on Pius XII. The Deputy emerged from the cloud of influence of the Soviet intelligence apparatus. In 1963, General Ivan Agayants, the famous chief of the KGB’s disinformation department, told his allied Romanian intelligence agents in Bucharest that a project known as "Seat-12" had materialized into a powerful play attacking Pope Pius XII. Agayants took credit for the outline of the play, and claimed that it had voluminous appendices of background documents put together by his experts with help from documents purloined from the Vatican. Agayants also claimed that The Deputy’s producer, Erwin Piscator, was "a devoted Communist who had a longstanding relationship with Moscow. In 1929 he had founded the Proletarian Theater in Berlin, then sought political asylum in the Soviet Union when Hitler came to power, and a few years later had "emigrated" to the United States. In 1962 Piscator had returned to West Berlin to produce The Deputy." Before writing The Deputy, Hochhuth, who did not have a high school diploma (Abitur), was working in various inconspicuous capacities for the Bertelsmann publishing house, and was not known to be a budding writer or playwright..^[8]