Abstract/Summary

The chapter offers the first close reading of humanist discourse in Friedrich Wolf's play 'Professor Mamlock'. Wolf wrote the play while fleeing the Nazis. In this first attempt to deal with the radical changes in Hitler's Germany, Wolf already perceived the fascist re-structuring as an anti-humanist value reversal. In the story of the German-Jewish surgeon Hans Mamlock, Wolf records the 'fascist value revolution' in detail and warns of its genocidal drive. The play shows the majority of 'normal' Germans as supporting the radical changes and thus the birth of the bystander society.