PATRICIA MARX
Of course, the choice of a heightened language-whether we
convey it through free verse, or however-was made easier for me
by the milieu of the play. Anyone who talks, for example, to high
church dignitaries, will find that they do not speak in an ordinary,
everyday language, but that they express themselves, as a matter of
course, in a more ceremonial manner- as it were, words on cothur–
ni. I do not think, however, that it is still possible to write a drama
in classical verse form, when the characters are people from our walk
of life.
MARX:
Mr. Hochhuth, did you feel constrained, as an artist, to be his–
torically accurate? Was there a conflict between you as an artist, and
you as an historian?
HOCHHUTH:
Only inasmuch as writing a play about events that lie only
two decades behind us required a much more intensive research into
historical documents than if one were writing, say, a play about Luther.
MARX:
How did the idea for the play present itself? How did it take
shape?
HOCHHUTH:
It all happened a long time ago, and it is very hard for me
to reconstruct exactly how it began. I think I took down a few notes,
referring to the character of Gerstein, because my idea was to write
a short story about him-quite a long time ago.
Later, however, in 1956, I met a man in Austria who had helped
with the gassing in Auschwitz. He had been transferred there as politi–
cal punishment. And I read accounts which referred back to this
subject. Then it first became clear
to
me what the form of the play
must be.
Also, at that time, the book,
The Third Reich and the Jews,
which
contained the report of Gerstein, was published. And then, in 1958, a
book appeared containing the documents concerning the Vatican's at–
titude toward the deportation of Jews from Rome. At that time, I was
living in Munster because my wife was a student there; and I heard
accounts of a vain attempt to arrest Bishop Galen-or rather, of the
Nazis' hesitation to imprison him. I cannot say more than this. It is
now seven years ago. It all fitted itself together like a mosaic.
Then, the actual work on the play began-my daily work on it
starting in the spring of 1959.
MARX:
How did the Pope enter into the play?
HOCHHUTH :
That came about with the consideration- with the question
of how, in this so-called Christian Europe, the murder of an entire
people could take place without the highest moral authority of this
earth having a word to say about it.
MARX:
In the beginning, then, the Pope wasn't in the play at all?
