AN OPEN LETTER TO ROLF HOCHHUTH

Dear Mr. Hochhuth, You contributed an essay to the festschrift for Georg Lukács¹ which I have only just now seen and which is essentially a polemic against me, perhaps with the aim of continuing indirectly the debate of many years ago between Lukács and myself. “Our fashionable chief theoretician”—from the context I must assume that you mean me, although I do not quite see who the collective in this “our” is supposed to be. A role of this kind is generally provided for only in totalitarian states; I do not make such claims, nor do I exercise this kind