The Land of Deepening Shadow: Germany-at-War

by D. Thomas Curtin

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.