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interests, but I do not reproach it with that. I must, however, add
that this conversation with the Jesuit did not occur until after the
appearance of my play, and that today it seems very good for me that
this conversation occurred as late as it did. I am now firmly convinced
that this calculation in terms of eons, of gigantic chunks of time,
played its part
in
the Pope's decision. But even today I would hardly
dare to represent the Pope with this kind of metaphysical hardness.
Let us hope that he was really concerned with the political and
historical arguments, the charitable arguments, which are proposed in
the fourth act as his motivation, and that it was these arguments
alone which brought him to this awful decision.
If
it were otherwise,
then the decision and indeed the Church itself would have to be
conceived of as altogether inimical to life. I found this attitude of the
Jesuit extremely inimical to life and indeed I told him so. But this
did not concern him very much, for life is, for him, not the first and
last consideration, whereas to us ordinary mortals who are not firmly
embedded in our faith-and who is nowadays?-to us, life is very
much the first and last concern.
That Pius XII himself, of course, was influenced by this kind of
ecclesiastic thinking or that he embodied it himself to a very large
degree is proven in any case by a speech which I transcribed and
included in my fourth act. A speech he made about the Poles when,
in their need and despair, they asked him for help:
"As the flowers of the countryside wait beneath winter's mantle
of snow for the warm breezes of spring, so the Jews must wait, praying
and trusting that the hour of heavenly comfort will come."
I didn't change anything in this except one single word. Instead
of the word "Poles" I used the word "Jews." That is the whole story.
MARX.:
Mr. Hochhuth, is a religious faith in another world inimical to
the kind of humanism that you value? Is it a necessary consequence
of this belief that human life is not taken seriously on this earth?
HOCHHUTH:
For God's sake, no. Faith is a good thing, and I envy any
human being who is firmly established in it. But he must not, or he
should not, be led by his faith into any kind of neglect of the matters
of this earth. Obviously our turn will come, the turn of all of us,
someday; and probably everyone has at least for a moment of every
day, the feeling of resignation toward the things of this earth. A
moment when he knows that to founder here below is the ultimate,
that which is destined for all of us, no matter how great our earthly
involvement, no matter how great our ambition. Then it is very good
to have faith. Then it is probably the sole salvation to have faith.
