Tuesday, January 25, 2022 – Oberammergau, Germany
- Mary Reed
- Jan 26, 2022
- 16 min read
Updated: Jan 27, 2022
My church — Lovers Lane United Methodist — is organizing a European Capitals Tour for September, including a stop in Oberammergau, Germany to see the Passion Play. Apparently, it is a six-hour presentation with a break in the middle for a meal and is only presented every 10 years. I have never been to Germany and only know a few words in German: sauerbraten, a tender beef roast that is one of Germany’s national dishes, and “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” which means “Do you speak German?” I am not sure why I know the last phrase; a more useful phrase in German would be “Do you speak English?” I have attended Oktoberfest celebrations in Addison where I live and always enjoy the German cuisine like German fried potatoes, strudel and German chocolate cake. Plus, there are usually several oompah bands that perform i.e., they play polkas, mazurkas, waltzes, schottisches, etc. often featuring a clarinet. The term “oompah” is an imitation of the downbeats played by the bass or tuba. One of the most famous things about Germany is, of course, the beer garden. I don’t like beer that has a lot of hops in it — too bitter for me. But a refreshing lager is delicious. I’m sure good food, beer and music can be found in Oberammergau. Let’s learn more about it.
According to Wikipedia, Oberammergau is a municipality in the district of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in Bavaria, Germany. The small town on the Ammer River is known for its woodcarvers and woodcarvings, for its NATO School and around the world for its 380-year tradition of mounting Passion Plays.
Tongue-twister
The name of the village — as well as that of neighboring Unterammergau — appears in a well-known German tongue-twister, often sung as a round:
German: Heut' kommt der Hans zu mir, freut sich die Lies.
Ob er aber über Oberammergau,
oder aber über Unterammergau,
oder aber überhaupt nicht kommt,
das ist net g'wiß!
English: Hans will come join with me,
rejoices Lies.
If he comes by way of Oberammergau
or by way of Unterammergau,
or if at all he comes,
that is not sure!
Traditional art
The village is also known as the home of a long tradition of woodcarving; the Bavarian State Woodcarving School is located there. Among the celebrated former students is the German artist Wolfram Aichele. His processional church staff depicting Christ on a donkey can be seen in the church of St Peter and St Paul. The streets of central Oberammergau are home to dozens of woodcarver shops, with pieces ranging from religious subjects to toys to humorous portraits.
Oberammergau is also famous for its Lüftlmalerei or frescoes of traditional Bavarian themes, fairy tales, religious scenes or architectural trompe-l'œil found on many homes and buildings. Lüftlmalerei is common in Upper Bavaria, and its name may be derived from an Oberammergau house called Zum Lüftl, which was the home of facade painter Franz Seraph Zwinck (1748–1792).
The village is also known for its religious art. A wooden statue of Our Lady of Good Voyage from Oberammergau stands in the Seaport Shrine in Boston, Massachusetts.
Transportation
Oberammergau lies near the Bundesstraße 23, part of the Deutsche Alpenstrasse route. Its single-track, single platform railway station is the terminus of the Ammergau Railway. Several aerial lifts climb the nearby mountains.
Military
The Conrad von Hötzendorf Kaserne was built just east of the village in 1935–37 as a base for the signals detachment of the Mountain Brigade. In October 1943 the barracks were taken over by the Messerschmitt company as a research and development site; 23 miles of tunnels were bored into the neighboring Laber mountain for engine production facilities, and a winter sports hotel was also taken over. In all, Messerschmitt had 500 employees in the design department and about 1,300 more in the factory. At the end of the Second World War, the Messerschmitt design department was visited by both U.S. and British scientific missions, as well as by teams from Bell Aircraft Corp. who stayed for five weeks and de Havilland Aircraft Co. Ltd. Among the German staff interviewed by the Fedden Mission were Woldemar Voigt, Messerschmitt's chief designer, Hans Hornung and Joseph Helmschrott.
After the war, the Americans occupied the kaserne, renaming it Hawkins Barracks and making it the primary facility of U.S. Army School Europe; over the next three decades schools in specialties ranging from military police to nuclear weapons handling were located there. The base reverted to German Army control, and its original name in 1974.
NATO School, formerly NATO Weapons Systems School, the alliance's principal training and education facility on the operational level, has been located at Hawkins Barracks/Hötzendorf Kaserne since 1953.
Passion Play
The Oberammergau Passion Play is a passion play that has been performed every year from 1634 to 1680 and every 10 years since 1680 — with a few exceptions — by the inhabitants of the village of Oberammergau, Bavaria, Germany. It was written by Othmar Weis, J A Daisenberger, Otto Huber, Christian Stuckl, Rochus Dedler, Eugen Papst, Marcus Zwink, Ingrid H Shafer and the inhabitants of Oberammergau with music by Dedler. Since its first production it has been performed on open-air stages in the village. The text of the play is a composite of four distinct manuscripts dating from the 15th and 16th centuries.
The play is a staging of Jesus' passion, covering the short final period of his life from his visit to Jerusalem and leading to his execution by crucifixion. It is the earliest continuous survivor of the age of Christian religions vernacular drama. It has also frequently been criticized as antisemitic. However, a multi-decade effort to reduce antisemitic content — led by the American Jewish Committee and other Jewish and Christian allies — has, in recent decades, lead to substantial revisions in the play. The play's current director, Christian Stuckl, has collaborated extensively on this effort with such organizations.
The play is now performed in years ending with a zero, as well as in 1934 which was the 300th anniversary and 1984 which was the 350th anniversary — though the 1920 performance was postponed to 1922 due to postwar economic conditions, and the 1940 performance was cancelled due to the onset of the Second World War in 1939.
The 2020 play has been delayed until May 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe.
Vow
According to legend, an outbreak of bubonic plague devastated Bavaria during the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648). Bad Kohlgrub was so depopulated that only two married couples remained alive. The village of Oberammergau remained plague-free until September 25, 1633, when a man named Kaspar Schisler returned home after working in the nearby village of Eschenlohe. Over the next 33 days, 81 villagers would die — half of Oberammergau's population. On October 28, 1633, the villagers vowed that if God spared them from the plague, they would perform a play every 10 years depicting the life and death of Jesus. Nobody died of plague in Oberammergau after that vow, and the villagers kept their word to God by performing the passion play for the first time in 1634.
The legend is a distorted account of the actual plague. There was an outbreak of plague in Oberammergau, but it took place from September 1632 to March 1633, when there were a total of 84 deaths from all causes. Deaths followed an epidemic curve instead of ending suddenly. There was one death in September 1632, rising to 20 deaths in March 1633 and ending with one death in July 1633. There is also no record of a man named Kaspar Schisler. Only two couples got married in Bad Kohlgrub in 1634, instead of only two couples surviving the plague. There were 39 marriages in Bad Kohlgrub in 1635, so hundreds of villagers must have survived.
The errors may have been introduced by the retelling of an oral history that was not written down until 1733. The original work has been lost, and only fragments of the oral history survive as quotations in other works. The legend is retold in the play “The Plague of 1633, which used to be performed the year before the Passion Play. It was retold as recently as the 1999 vow ceremony, which marked the beginning of rehearsals for the 2000 play. The town of Oberammergau now claims that Kaspar Schisler came home for a church festival in 1632 instead of 1633.
Performance
The production involves over 2,000 performers, musicians and stage technicians — all residents of the village. This was a labor-intensive community enterprise, in which only natives of the village could participate. Performances have taken place between mid-May and early October. About half the inhabitants of Oberammergau took part in the once-a-decade Passion Play in 2010.
The play comprises spoken dramatic text, musical and choral accompaniment and tableaux vivants, which are scenes from the Old Testament depicted for the audience by motionless actors accompanied by verbal description. These scenes are the basis for the typology — the interrelationship between the Old and New Testaments — of the play. They include a scene of King Ahasuerus rejecting Vashti in favor of Esther, the brothers selling Joseph into slavery in Egypt and Moses raising up the nehushtan or bronze serpent in the wilderness. Each scene precedes that section of the play that is considered to be prefigured by the scene. The three tableaux mentioned are presented to the audience as prefiguring Christianity superseding Judaism, Judas selling information on the location of Jesus and the crucifixion of Jesus.
The evolution of the Passion Play was about the same as that of the Easter Play, originating in the ritual of the Latin Church, which prescribes — among other things — that the Gospel on Good Friday should be sung in parts divided among various persons.
Tourism
The play has a major economic impact on Oberammergau. There is a local expression "Die Passion zahlt" or "The Passion Play will pay for it" in explaining how the Oberammergau community financed construction of a new community swimming pool, community center and other civic improvements. Since 1930, the number of visitors has ranged from 420,000 to 530,000. Most tickets are sold as part of a package with one-night or two-nights' accommodation.
Plot synopsis
Prelude
The prologue and chorus greet the audience. Two tableaux are presented. In the first, Adam and Eve, wearing sheepskins are banished from the Garden of Eden by a winged angel who holds a sword in the form of a flame. Behind the angel stands a burst of gilded rays symbolizing the tree of forbidden fruit. The second living picture traditionally showed a number of girls and smaller children surrounding a cross at center stage. The adoration represents the time in 1633 when villagers swore their vow before a huge crucifix bearing a 12-foot-high Jesus.
Act 1 – Jesus and the Money Changers
Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey to the shouts and exultation of the people on Palm Sunday. He drives the money changers and traders from the temple, then returns to Bethany.
Act 2 – Conspiracy of the High Council
In the past, this act began with a tableau showing the sons of the patriarch Jacob conspiring to kill Joseph in the Plain of Dothan; the frieze was deleted from the 1980 presentation. The act consists of discussions between the traders and Sanhedrin, who agree that Jesus must be arrested to preserve Mosaic law, primarily refers to the Torah or the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.
Act 3 – Parting at Bethany
Two tableaux presage the action. In the first, the young Tobias departs from his parents while the angel Raphael — played by another boy — waits, crook in hand, stage left. In the second, the loving bridesmaid from the Song of Solomon laments the loss of her groom. In the play, Christ is anointed by Mary Magdalene, then takes leave of his mother and friends. Judas is angered by the waste of the spikenard oil.
Act 4 – The Last Journey to Jerusalem
A controversial tableau — now deleted — showed Queen Vashti dishonored at the court of King Ahasuerus. The old queen (Judaism, explains the Prologue) has been displaced by Esther (Christianity). Jesus sends two disciples to secure a Paschal lamb. He enters Jerusalem for the last time and weeps over the fate of the city. Judas contemplates betraying his master and is tempted by Dathan and other merchants.
Act 5 – The Last Supper
The Passover Seder or Last Supper is celebrated in a scene evocative of the famous Da Vinci painting. Jesus washes the feet of his disciples and institutes the mass with wine and thick, brown, leavened bread. Two tableaux show Moses with rays or horns protruding from his head, bringing manna and grapes to the people in the wilderness.
Act 6 – The Betrayer
In a tableau, Joseph, a boy nude to the waist, is sold by his brothers to the Midianites for 20 pieces of silver. In accompanying action, Judas appears before the Sanhedrin and promises to deliver Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. After his departure, the Pharisees plan at great length the death of Jesus.
Act 7 – Jesus at the Mount of Olives
Two more Old Testament scenes introduce the soliloquy of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. The first, a non-sequitur — which explains that man must earn his food by the sweat of his brow — shows Adam, in sheepskin and assisted by a brood of similarly attired children, drawing a plow across a field. The second frieze more appropriately offers a helmeted Joab, surrounded by soldiers stabbing an unsuspecting Amasa in the ribs. Christ agonizes over his fate while his apostles doze. Judas enters with an armed band and betrays Jesus with a kiss.
Act 8 – Jesus Before Annas
The Old Testament parallel has Micah slapped on the cheek by Zedekiah, priest of Baal, for daring to predict King Ahab would die in battle. In like manner, Jesus is taken before a waiting, eager Annas and is struck on the face for his insolence. Soldiers also deride Christ as he is led through the streets by a rope.
Act 9 – Condemned by the High Council
Two more tableaux emphasize the humiliation of Christ. In one, the aged Naboth is condemned by false witnesses and is stoned to death by the sons of Jezebel. In the other, Job, sitting on a dunghill is railed at by his friends, servants — even his wife and children. Meanwhile, Jesus is questioned by Caiaphas about his messiah-ship and is condemned. A tortured Judas tries to get the Sanhedrin to repeal its verdict. When his efforts prove unsuccessful, he tosses the money back at them and storms off.
Act 10 – Despair of Judas
Judas and all who identify with him are linked with Cain in the opening tableau. The battered body of Abel appears at center stage. To the right is Cain, clad in a leopard skin and holding a club in one hand. His other hand is at his brow, attempting to conceal the brand of God. In this short act Judas offers a speech of remorse then hangs himself.
Act 11 – Christ Before Pilate
Originally there was a frieze that heralded Christ's first appearance before Pilate. The tableau of Daniel in the great pillared hall of Darius was deleted from later 20th-century productions. Pilate's interrogation, coupled with news of his wife's dream, convinces the governor that Jesus should be prosecuted by Herod Antipas for lese majesty.
Act 12 – Christ Before Herod
The scene stands without the original living picture which showed a blinded Samson mocked by the Philistines. Herod treats Christ with scorn, demanding a miracle, then sends him back to Pilate, cloaked in a red mantle of royalty. Responding to the urging of the Sanhedrin, Pilate reluctantly agrees to have Jesus scourged. Roman guards beat Jesus and press a crown of thorns into his scalp.
Act 13 - Christ Sentenced to Death on the Cross
Two graphic pictures showing the presentation of Joseph's bloodied coat to Jacob, and Abraham about to stab Isaac on Mt. Moriah have been rejected from contemporary versions of the Passion. Retained, however, are tableaux which show Joseph riding a sedan chair as vizir of Egypt and another which supposedly represents the scapegoat offering of Yom Kippur. Following the tableaux, the stage is swarming with action as priests and Pharisees bring mobs from every direction. Pilate gives Jesus another hearing then offers the people a choice between Jesus and Barabbas. They demand and receive a final judgement on Christ.
Act 14 – The Way of the Cross
The final segment of the Passion is introduced by a more sublime image of the Akedah, or binding of Isaac. In this tableau, the boy — like Jesus — carries wood on his back as he and Abraham climb Mt. Moriah. Another frieze, showing Moses and a bronze serpent intertwined about the cross has been deleted. When the chorus withdraws from the stage Christ bears his cross to Golgotha. As he passes through the streets he encounters his mother, Veronica, and Simon of Cyrene. The women of Jerusalem weep for him.
Act 15 – Jesus on Calvary
For the first time the chorus appears in black traditional mourning garb. There is no tableau. He is mocked by members of the Sanhedrin and the soldiers and utters his last words. The legs of the criminals are broken. A soldier pierces the side of Christ with a lance and blood gushes forth. Jesus' followers slowly and reverently take down the body and lay it before his mother in a replica of the Pieta. The Sanhedrin insists that guards be posted before the tomb which is to hold Christ's body.
Resurrection and Apotheosis
For the first time, action precedes a tableau. Roman guards see a light at the tomb. Mary Magdalene and the other women encounter an angel and recite the same lines as Quem Quaeritis, four lines of the medieval Easter liturgy that later formed the kernel of the large body of medieval liturgical drama. The final tableau shows Jesus resplendent in white with his apostles, angels, the Virgin Mary and Moses. The Passion ends with a proclamation by the chorus.
Length
The running time has varied due to the many revisions that have taken place through the years. In 2010 it had a running time of 5 hours, beginning at 2:30 pm and ending at 10:00 pm, with a meal break. It was staged a total of 102 days and ran from May 15 until October 3 that year. According to a record from 1930, the play then had running time of approximately seven hours. It started at 8:00 am and ended at 5:00 pm with a meal break. Audiences come from all over the world, often on package tours, the first instituted in 1870. Admission fees were first charged in 1790.
The Passion Play Theatre
Oberammergau's original parish church proved to be far too small for performances of the Passion Play, so it was decided to hold the play in the graveyard of the church, before the graves of the villagers who had died in the plague.
The fame of the play must have spread quickly to the surrounding towns and villages — for as early as 1674, records show that seats were to be provided for the audience.
Over the following years, sets and stage mechanics were added to the simple wooden stage structure. By the middle of the 18th century, it was obvious that the graveyard was also too small, and a new venue was found on a field close by; however, the stage had to be specially built every year of the play.
The first permanent stage seems to have been built in 1815 to a design by the then-local parish priest. In 1830 he was asked to help build a new, larger stage on the site of the present theatre. When it rained, the audience got wet; umbrellas would have obscured the view of people sitting behind them.
However, in 1890 a new, purpose-built theatre was built and — apart from some of the scenes on the side of the stage — it would have looked much as it does today. It was ready in time for the 1900 performance, with the six-arched hall capable of holding over 4,000 spectators.
The theatre was enlarged in time for the 1930 and 1934 seasons, and while it was considered ugly and uncomfortable, it was praised for its superb acoustics and sight of the stage.
Following the 1990 production, both the interior and façade of the theatre were renovated and the stage mechanics modernized.
It has now been transformed. New more comfortable seating has been installed along with under-floor heating; cloakrooms have been extended. The foyer was made accessible for wheelchair users; exhibition areas were added. Safety and toilet facilities were improved. In 2010 a retractable glass roof was installed over the stage, which before then had been open to precipitation.
Today, the theatre can seat an audience of over 4,700.
Antisemitism
Previous versions of the play were antisemitic in character, blaming the Jews for the "murder" of Christ. Adolf Hitler indicated, according to Abe Foxman, approval of these allegedly anti-Semitic elements in the Oberammergau Passion Play.
After Nazi Germany's defeat in World War II, the passion play came under increasing pressure from American Jews because of its anti-Semitic elements. In 1950, playwright Arthur Miller and composer Leonard Bernstein led a petition to cancel the passion play. However, the townspeople defiantly restaged the 1934 play. In the 1960s, Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, Paul Celan, and other prominent intellectuals called for a boycott due to the play's antisemitism. In the 1970s, Oberammergau invited representatives from Jewish organizations to revise the play, and revisions were approved by a Christian theological advisor. However, only minor revisions were made in the 1980 play. Change finally came in 1986, when generational turnover in the Community Council resulted in the 24-year-old Christian Stückl becoming director. Stückl narrowly survived an attempt by conservative members of the Community Council to fire him in 1989. Prior to 1990, the play had been largely based on a mid-19th century version edited by pastor Alois Daisenberger. Stückl, alongside dramaturgist Otto Huber, made considerable changes to the 1990 version to remove antisemitism from the text. The most radical changes came in 2000, when the story was reinterpreted as an inner-Jewish conflict, with some Jews supporting and others opposing the crucifixion of Jesus. Muslims were allowed to perform in the Passion Play for the first time in 2000.
A 2010 review in the Jewish newspaper The Forward stated: "It is undeniably true that the play was virulently antisemitic through most of its history, and that it gained an extra dose of notoriety after Hitler endorsed the 1934 production." The review noted that the Anti-Defamation League states that the play "continues to transmit negative stereotypes of Jews" and that even the Catholic Church demanded changes to the play, to bring it more in line with church policies expressed by the Second Vatican Council, 1962–1965, in the Apostolic Constitution, Nostra aetate, 4, October 28, 1965. ("[T]he Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God as if this followed from Sacred Scripture"). 2000 and 2010 director Christian Stückl told "The Forward" that Jesus "lived as a Jew." Therefore, in the revised play, Jesus and his disciples pray in Hebrew. After viewing the play, the reviewer was sympathetic to its artistry and felt less offended by its message than by "Wagner's antisemitic caricatures and religious mysticism". Nonetheless, the review quoted a report from the Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations, which reviewed the 2010 script and objected that the play still makes use of "elements that are historically dubious" from the gospels. The review stated that "It seems unfair" to accuse the play of anti-semitism when it recounts material in Christianity's sacred texts and noted that the ADL's national director Abe Foxman had said that if the play is "about a Crucifixion in which the Jews kill Christ, you can never clean it up enough" to avoid an anti-semitic message.
For the 2022 play, the American Jewish Committee has convened an Academic Advisory Group led by Rabbi Noam Marans, AJC’s director of interreligious and intergroup relations, and other experts in the play, Christian-Jewish relations, New Testament studies and German-Jewish relations. This group was created to recommend — through ongoing dialogue — pathways by which the play’s leadership can further advance a decades-long process to rid the play of any lingering anti-Jewish tropes. AJC has described the collaborative process with the Oberammergau community as productive: “The Oberammergau leadership desire for ongoing improvement is genuine,” even as “there remain concerns about points within the play that do not properly reflect" the range of first-century Jewish opinion on Jesus’s leadership. This reflects both the historic progress in Christian-Jewish relations in the past decades and also lingering tensions over the anti-Jewish implications of certain traditional Christian interpretations of the gospels’ narratives of Jesus’s conviction and execution.
The changes to the play since World War II have included the manner in which the play presents the charge of deicide — the killing of a god, collective guilt, supersessionism or replacement theology and typology, as well as the following:
- The role of the temple traders has been reduced.
- The character "Rabbi" has been eliminated and his lines given to another character.
- Jewish priests no longer wear horn-shaped hats.
- Jesus has been addressed as Rabbi Yeshua.
- Jesus and others speak fragments of Hebrew prayers in the play.
- Jews are shown disputing with others about theological aspects of Judaism, not just
about Jesus.
- Pilate has been made to appear more tyrannical and threatens Caiaphas, the Jewish
high priest, and it is made clear that Caiaphas does not speak for all the Jews.
- Romans now stand guard at the gates when Jesus makes his entrance to Jerusalem.
- Jesus' supporters have been added to the screaming crowd outside Pilate's palace.
- Judas is portrayed as being duped into betraying Jesus.
- The lines "His blood is upon us and also upon our children's children" (from Matthew
We don't want that! Far be it from us to abandon Moses and his law."
- At the Last Supper, Jesus recites the blessing over the wine in Hebrew.
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