CHAPTER IX
ANTON LANG OF OBERAMMERGAU
While I was at home on a few weeks' visit in October, 1915, I read in the newspapers a simple announcement cabled from Europe that Anton Lang of Oberammergau had been killed in the great French offensive in Champagne. This came as a shock to many Americans, for the name of this wonderful character who had inspired people of all shades of opinion and religious belief in his masterful impersonation of Christ in the decennial Passion Play was almost as well known in the United States and in England as in his native Bavaria, and better, I found than in Prussia.
British and American tourist agencies had put Oberammergau on the map of the world. The interest in America after the Passion Play of 1910 was so great, in fact, that some newspapers ran extensive series of illustrated articles describing it. The man who played the part of Christ was idealised, everybody who had seen him liked him, respected him and admired him. Thousands had said that somehow a person felt better after he had seen Anton Lang. As a supreme test of his popularity, American vaudeville managers asked him to name his own terms for a theatrical tour.
And now the man who had imbued his life with that of the Prince of Peace had thrown the past aside, and with the spiked helmet in place of the Crown of Thorns had gone to his death trying not to save but to slaughter his fellow-men.
Truly, the changes wrought by war are great!
* * * * *
In Berlin I inquired into the circumstances of Anton Lang's death. Nobody knew anything definite. Berlin knew little of him in life, much less than London, New York or Montreal.
Munich is different. There his name is a household word. Herr von
Meinl, then Director of the Bavarian Ministry, now member of the
Bundesrat, told me that he believed that there was a mistake in the
report that Anton had been killed.
Later, when tramping through the Bavarian Highlands, I walked one winter day from Partenkirchen to Oberammergau, for I had a whim to know the truth of the matter.
On the lonely mountain road that winds sharply up from Oberau I overtook a Benedictine monk who was walking to the monastery at Ettal. We talked of the war in general and of the Russian prisoners we had seen in the saw-mills at Untermberg. I was curious to hear his views upon the war, and I soon saw that not even the thick walls of a monastery are proof against the idea-machine in the Wilhelmstrasse. Despite Cardinal Mercier's denunciation of German methods in Belgium, this monk's views were the same as the rest of the Kaiser's subjects. He did, however, admit that he was sorry for the Belgians, although, in true German fashion, he did not consider Germany to blame. He sighed to think that "the Belgian King had so treacherously betrayed his people by abandoning his neutrality and entering into a secret agreement with France and Great Britain." He recited the regular story of the secret military letters found by the Germans after they had invaded Belgium, the all-important marginal notes of which were maliciously left untranslated in the German Press.
We parted at Ettal, and I pushed on down the narrow valley to Oberammergau. The road ahead was now in shadow, but behind me the mountain mass was dazzling white in the rays of the setting sun. "What a pity," I thought, "that the peasant must depart from these beautiful mountains and valleys to die in the slime of the trenches."
The day was closing in quiet and grandeur, yet all the time the shadow of death was darkening the peaceful valley of the Ammer. I became aware of it first as I passed the silent churchyard with its grey stones rising from the snow. For there, on the other side of the old stone wall that marks the road, was a monument on which the Reaper hacks the toll of death. The list for 1870 was small, indeed, compared with that of die grosse Zeit. I looked for Lang and found it, for Hans had died, as had also Richard.
I passed groups of men cutting wood and hauling ice and grading roads, men with rounder faces and flatter noses than the Bavarians, still wearing the yellowish-brown uniform of Russia. That is, most of them wore it. Some, whose uniforms had long since gone to tatters, were dressed in ordinary clothing, with flaming red R's painted on trousers and jackets.
An old woman with a heavy basket on her back was trudging past a group of these. "How do you like them?" I asked. "We shall really miss them when they go," she said. "They seem part of the village now. The poor fellows, it must be sad for them so far from home."
Evidently the spirit of new Germany had not saturated her.
I went through crooked streets, bordered with houses brightly frescoed with biblical scenes, to the Pension Dahein, the home of the man I wished to see. As he rose from his pottery bench to welcome me, I felt that beneath his great blue apron and rough garb of the working man was true nobility. I did not need to ask if he was Anton Lang. I had seen his picture and had often been told that his face was the image of His Who died on the Cross. I expected much, but found infinitely more. I felt that life had been breathed into a Rubens masterpiece. No photograph can do him justice, for no lens can catch the wondrous light in his clear blue eyes.
I was the only guest at the Pension Daheim; indeed, I was the only stranger in Oberammergau. I sat beside Anton Lang in his work room as his steady hands fashioned things of clay, I ate at table with him, and in the evening we pulled up our chairs to the comfortable fireside, where we talked of his country and of my country, of the Passion Play and of the war.
I had been sceptical about him until I met him. I wondered if he was self-conscious about his goodness, or if he was a dreamer who could not get down to the realities of this world, or if he had been spoiled by flattery, or if piety was part of his profession.
When I finally went from there I felt that I really understood him. His life has been without an atom of reproach, yet he never poses as pious. He does not preach, or stand aloof, or try to make you feel that he is better than you, but down in your heart you know that he is. He has been honoured by royalty and men of state, yet he remains simple and unaffected, though quietly dignified in manner. He is truly Nature's Nobleman, with a mind that is pure and a face the mirror of his mind.
To play well his role of Christus is the dominating passion of his life. Not the make-up box, but his own thoughts must mould his features for the role, which has been his in 1890, 1900 and 1910.
His travels include journeys to Rome and to the Holy Land. He is well read, an interesting talker, and an interested listener. He commented upon the great change in the spirit of the people, a change from the intoxicating enthusiasm of victory to a war-weary feeling of trying to hold out through a sense of duty. To my question as to when he thought the war would end, he answered: "When Great Britain and Germany both realise that each must make concessions. Neither can crush the other."
The doctrine that "only through hate can the greatest obstacles in life be overcome" has not reached his home, nor was there hanging on the wall, as in so many German homes, the famous order of the day of Crown Prince Rupert of Bavaria, which commences with "Soldiers of the army! Before you are the English!" in which he exhorts his troops with all the tricky sophistry of hate.
Anton Lang has worked long hard hours to bring up his family, rather than accept fabulous offers for a theatrical tour of America. He refused these offers through no mere caprice.
"I admit that the temptation is great," he said to me. "Here I must always work hard and remain poor; there I quickly could have grown rich. But the Passion Play is not a business," he continued earnestly. "Nearly three hundred years ago, when a terrible plague raged over the land, the people of Oberammergau vowed to Almighty God that if He would save their village, they would perform every ten years in His glory the Passion of His Divine Son. The village was saved and Oberammergau has kept its promise. You see, if I had accepted those theatrical offers I could never again live in my native village, and that would break my heart."
There is carefully preserved in the town hall at Oberammergau an old chronicle which tells of the plague. There will undoubtedly be preserved in the family of Lang a new chronicle, a product of the war, printed in another country, a chronicle which did not rest content with a notice of Anton's obituary, but told the details of his death in battle.
Frau Lang showed me this chronicle. She seemed to have something on her mind of which she wished to speak, after I told her that I was an American journalist. At length one evening, after the three younger children bad gone to bed, and the eldest was industriously studying his lessons for the next day, she ventured. "American newspapers tell stories which are not at all true, don't they?" she half stated, half asked.
My natural inclination was to defend American journalism by attacking that of Germany, but something restrained me, I did not know what. "Of course," I explained, "in a country such as ours where the Press is free, evils sometimes arise. We have all kinds of newspapers. A few are very yellow, but the vast majority seek to be accurate, for accuracy pays in the long run in self-respecting journalism." I thought that perhaps she was referring to the announcement of the death of the man who was sitting with us in the room. We both agreed, however, that such a mistake was perfectly natural since two Langs of Oberammergau had already been killed. In fact, Anton had read of his own death notice in a Munich paper. The American correspondent who had cabled the news on two occasions had presumably simply "lifted" the announcement from the German papers. Frau Lang could understand that very well when I explained, but how about the stories that Anton had been serving a machine-gun, and other details which were pure fiction?
She had trump cards which she played at this point. Two gaudily coloured "Sunday Supplements" of a certain newspaper combination in the United States were spread before me. The first told of how Anton Lang had become a machine-gunner of marked ability, and that he served his deadly weapon with determination. Could the Oberammergau Passion Play ever exert the old influence again, after this? was the query at the end of the article.
A second had all the details of Anton's death and was profusely illustrated. The story started with Anton going years ago into the mountains to try out his voice in order to develop it for his histrionic task. There was a brief account of how he had followed in the path of the Prince of Peace, and of the tremendous effect he had upon his audiences.
Then came the war, which tore him from his humble home. The battle raged, the Bavarians charged the French lines, and the spot-light of the story was played upon a soldier from Oberammergau who lay wounded in "No-Man's Land." Another charging wave swept by this soldier, and as he looked up he saw the face of the man he had respected and loved more than all other men, the face of Anton Lang, the Christus of Oberammergau. The soldier covered his eyes with his hands, for never had Anton Lang looked as he did then. The eyes which had always been so beautiful, so compassionate, had murder in them now.
The scene shifted. A French sergeant and private crouched by their machine-gun ready to repel the charge, the mutual relationship being apparently somewhat that of a plumber and his assistant. They sprayed the oncoming Bavarians with a shower of steel and piled the dead high outside the French trenches. The charge had failed, and the sergeant began to act strangely. At length he broke the silence. "Did you see that last boche, Jean?" he asked. "Did you see that face?" Jean confessed that he did not. "You are fortunate, Jean," said the sergeant. "Never have I seen such a face before. I felt as if there was something supernatural about it. I felt that it was wrong to kill that man. I hated to do it, Jean.—But then the butcher was coming at us with a knife two feet long."
I finished reading and looked up at the questioning eyes of Frau Lang and at the wonderful, indescribable blue eyes of the "butcher" across the table, who, I may add, is fifty-two years of age, and has not had a day's military training in his life.
"And look," said Frau Lang, "these men are not even
Oberammergauers."
She pointed to one of the illustrations which depicted a small group of rather vicious-looking Prussians, with rifles ready peering over the rim of a trench. The picture was labelled "Four apostles now serving at the Front."
"And see," continued the perplexed woman, "there is Johann Zwinck, the Judas in the play. It says that he is at the front. Why, he is sixty-nine years old, and is still the village painter. Only yesterday I heard him complain that the war was making it difficult for him to get sufficient oil to mix his paint."
I was at a loss for words. "When one compares such terrible untruths with our German White Book," declared Frau Lang, "it is indeed difficult for the American people to understand the true situation."
I felt that it would be useless for me at that moment to explain certain very important omissions in the German White Book. Anything would look white in comparison with the yellow journal I had just read. But I knew, and tried to explain that the particular newspaper combination which printed such rubbish was well known in America for its inaccuracies and fabrications, and although it was pro-German, it would sacrifice anything for sensation. But the good woman, being a German, and consequently accustomed to standardisation, could not dissociate this newspaper from the real Press.