ABSTRACT
The most passionately discussed cultural event in postwar Germany is a play called Der Stellvertreter, produced in Berlin by Erwin Piscator, the man who can claim to have "invented" epic theatre together with Bertiolt Brecht, if not earlier. In a long postscript to the play, Rolf Hochhuth has given the sources from which he has drawn the opinion that the conduct of Pius was inexcusable. Apart from the many weaknesses and inconsistencies Hochhuth has written a play that belongs to a "hybrid", perhaps even an impossible, genre. But it also shows us the power of the theater. A German writer, Rudolf Kramer-Badoni, has remarked that never in all history have popes protested against atrocities on general humanitarian grounds, but only when such issues concerned the right of Catholics to follow their faith. But it is difficult to compare the murder of millions of Jews by a government with whom the Church had concluded a Concordat with other occasions for "protest".
