374
PATRICIA MARX
MARX:
Mr. Hochhuth, several times in the play you mention that char–
acters in the play now hold responsible positions in Germany. Does
the possibility of a resurgence of Nazism disturb you?
HOCHHUTH:
I wasn't thinking of any particular persons. I was inventing
my personages freely, except, of course, for those who are historical
figures. I consider it completely out of the question that a new wave
of National Socialism is to be feared in Germany. The Germans have
been burnt, and a burnt child fears the fire. I think they are cured for
this century. What our great-grandchildren will do, we do not know.
But I do not believe that, in view of the bad odor National Socialism
has acquired, the neighbors of a new Hitler would permit him to
come to power in the first place. Let us hope not, anyway.
However, there's an exception which we must mention here. There
are those as yet underdeveloped countries which have just acquired
their independence, like Egypt, in which nationalism is, at the moment,
bearing terrible fruits.
MARX :
Mr. Hochhuth, you have called this an age of fence-sitters. Who
do you feel is guilty of fence-sitting now, and about what things are
we not committing ourselves that we should take stands on?
HOCHHUTH:
I meant that somewhat differently. I said that I consider
it fatal if we allow ourselves to be influenced by the chitchat of the
editorial writers about our living in an age of the masses, which,
naturally, is true to some extent. But we must not allow this to induce
a person to think only of his impotence, and not of the fact that as an
individual he must always bear the responsibility not only for his
family but for the entire community.
One must breed a sense of responsibility. It must begin at school.
This naturally presupposes that even the intellectuals should clearly
realize that even the least significant salesgirl who was born, perhaps,
in a tenement, and who never reads a book and never goes to the
theatre, is a human being like ourselves and that her face is to be
respected just as much, do you understand, as our own. And that we
ourselves, if we must speak about the masses, have to be quite con–
scious of our belonging to these masses just as much as that salesgirl.
Even as we wish to be respected as individuals within the mass, and so
respect ourselves, we must see the individual equally in every other
person whatever his class. I believe that that is a good working
principle for the inculcation of individual responsibility.
MAR..'<. :
What do you feel is the most effective way of teaching this sense
of responsibility?
HOCHHUTH:
I am not a pedagogue, but to reduce it to a formula, man
