ROLF HOCHHUTH
365
HOCHHUTH:
Well, there had appeared, as I said, some documents about
the attitude of the Vatican, which have a voice in the play. But it all
developed in such a way that the most meaningful antagonist of
Ric–
cardo could be none other than the highest moral authority-precisely
because he makes a demand which only this highest moral authority
can meet.
MARX:
Mr. Hochhuth, what writers influenced you the most?
HOCHHUTH:
Dramatists did not influence me so much as novelists, or
letter-writers.
I am always being asked, for example, why I did not study Brecht.
When I started writing, I was so much under the influence of Thomas
Mann that everything I wrote painfully echoed this great man. As a
beginner, one simply cannot resist him; indeed, there is a very well
known German writer who today, in his sixties, is still so much under
the spell of Thomas Mann that he has practically no independence,
which was very much my case, too. That is why I wanted to prevent,
at all costs, something like this happening to me with Brecht, and I
went out of my way to ignore him.
Naturally, I read many classical plays: the ancients, and Shakes–
peare, and also the Germans, including Hauptmann. But my concept
of life in the perspective of history was influenced much more by
novelists and story-tellers and above all, by the great German his–
torians-by Mommsen, very decisively.
I read him, not for his subject matter, which of course is Roman
history, but simply because man's bearing, his historic stance, can
most readily be deciphered through the study of history. This, for me,
is, and will surely remain, the most interesting area of investigation.
I shall never forget (though it does not strictly bear on this) a sentence
in Mommsen that really sank in, that I'll probably always carry with
me. It concerns an invasion of Sicily. Mommsen writes, with icily
laconic concentration: "The men were killed; their women and chil–
dren distributed among the soldiery." You see, I find that such sen–
tences contain all of history; and, when such insights are later combined
with the experiences one has had in one's own time-during the aerial
bombardments or just altogether during the Third Reich-then one
realizes that history is man's great fatality, and, God knows, a great
field of study for the man of letters.
MARX:
Many critics feel that your work has greater historical and moral
value than artistic value. I wonder what your response is to that
evaluation of your play?
