Glimpses of Three Coasts

by Helen Hunt Jackson

The village is, like all Tyrolean villages, built without apparent plan,—no two houses on a line, no two streets at right angles, everybody's house slanting across or against somebody else's house, the confusion really attaining the dignity of a fine art. If a child were to set out a toy village on the floor, decide hastily to put it back in its box, sweep it all together between his two hands, then change his mind, and let the houses remain exactly as they had fallen, with no change except to set them right side up, I think it would make a good map of Oberammergau. The houses are low, white-plastered, or else left of the natural color of the wood, which, as it grows old, is of a rich dark brown. The roofs project far over the eaves, and are held down by rows of heavy stones to keep them from blowing off in wind-storms. Tiny open-work balconies are twined in and out capriciously, sometimes filled with gay flowers, sometimes with hay and dried herbs, sometimes with the firewood for winter. Oberammergau knows in such matters no law but each man's pleasure. It is at each man's pleasure, also, where he will keep his manure-heap; and usually he elects to keep it close to the street, joining his barn or his house, or his neighbor's barn or house, at convenience. Except that there are many small sluices and rivulets and canals of spring water wandering about the village to carry off the liquidation, this would be intolerable, and surely would create pestilences. As it is, the odors are abominable, and are a perpetual drawback to the delight one would otherwise take in the picturesque little place.

There are many minute gardens and bits of orchard of all possible shapes,—as many and as many-sided as the figures in the first pages of Euclid. I saw one, certainly not containing more than eight square feet, which was seven-sided, fenced and joined to two houses. Purple phlox, dahlias, and lilacs are the favorite out-door flowers. Of these there were clumps and beds which might have been transported from New England. In the balconies and window-sills were scarlet geranium, white alyssum, and pansies.

The most striking natural feature of Oberammergau is the great mountain-peak to the southwest, called the Kofel. This is a bare, rocky peak of singularly bold contour. On its summit is set a large cross, which stands out always against the sky with a clearness almost solemn. The people regard this Kofel as the guardian angel of their village; and it is said that the reply was once made to persons who were urging the Passion Play actors to perform their play in England or America,—

"We would do so if it were possible; but to do that, it would be needful to take the entire village and our guardian spirit, the Kofel."

I arrived in Oberammergau on a Wednesday, and counted on finding myself much welcomed, three days in advance of the day of the play. Never was a greater mistake. A country cousin coming uninvited to make a visit in the middle of a busy housewife's spring house-cleaning would be as welcome. As I drove into the village the expression of things gave me alarm. Every fence, post, roof, bush, had sheets, pillow-cases, or towels drying on it; the porches and grass-plots were strewn with pillows and mattresses; a general fumigation and purification of a quarantined town could not have produced a greater look of being turned wrong side out. This is what the cleanly Oberammergau women do every week during the Passion Play season. It takes all the time intervening between the weekly representations of the play to make ready their bedrooms and beds.

I was destined to greater alarms and surprises, however. The Frau Rutz, to whom I had written for lodgings, and to whose house I drove all confident, had never heard of my name. It became instantaneously apparent to me that I probably represented to her mind perhaps the eleven hundred and thirty-seventh person who had stopped at her door with the same expectation. Half of her house was being re-roofed, "to be done by Sunday;" all her bed-linen was damp in baskets in the kitchen; and she and her sister were even then ironing for dear life to be done in time to begin baking and brewing on the next day. Evidently taking time by the forelock was a good way to come to a dead-lock in Oberammergau. To house after house I drove,—to Frau Zwink's bird-cage, perched on the brink of a narrow canal, and half over it, it seemed. Just before me stood a post-carriage, at Frau Zwink's door; and as I stepped out two English ladies with bags, bundles, and umbrellas disappeared within Frau Zwink's door, having secured the only two available perches in the cage. The Frau came running with urgent solicitations that I should examine a closet she had, which she thought might answer.

"Oh, is she the lady of the house, and she barefoot?" exclaimed my Danish maid, aghast at the spectacle. Yet I afterwards heard that the Frau Zwink's was one of the notably comfortable lodging-places in the town. In another house were shown to us two small dark rooms, to reach which one must climb a ladder out of the common living-room of the family. From house after house came the response, "No rooms; all promised for Saturday." At intervals I drove back to Frau Rutz's for further suggestions. At last she became gradually impressed with a sense of responsibility for our fortunes; and the mystery of her knowing nothing about my letter was cleared up. Her nephew had charge of the correspondence; she never saw the letters; he had not yet had time to answer one half of the letters he had received. Most probably my letter might be in his pocket now. Friendship grew up between my heart and the heart of the Frau Rutz as we talked. Who shall fathom or sound these bonds which create themselves so quickly with one, so slowly with another? She was an Oberammergau peasant, who knew no word of my tongue; I a woman of another race, life, plane, who could not speak one word she could comprehend, and our interpreter was only a servant; but I think I do not exaggerate when I say that the Frau and I became friends. I know I am hers; and I think if I were in Oberammergau in need, I should find that she was mine.

By some unexplained accident (if there be such things) the best room in all Oberammergau was still left free,—a great sunny room, with a south window and east windows, a white porcelain stove, an old-fashioned spinnet, a glass-doored corner-cupboard full of trinkets, old-fashioned looking-glasses, tables, and two good beds; and of this I took possession in incredulous haste. It was in the house of George Lang, merchant, the richest man in the town. The history of the family of which he is now the leading representative is identified with the fortunes of Oberammergau for a century past. It is an odd thing that this little village should have had its line of merchant princes,—a line dating back a hundred years, marked by the same curious points of heredity as that of the Vanderbilts or Astors in America, and the Rothschilds in Europe; men as shrewd, sharp, foreseeing, fore-planning, and executive in their smaller way, and perhaps as arbitrary in their monopolies, as some of our millionnaires.

In 1765 there lived in the service of the monastery at Ettal a man named Joseph Lang. He was a trusted man, a sort of steward and general supervisor. When the monastery was suppressed, Joseph Lang's occupation was gone. He was a handy man, both with tools and with colors, and wandering down to Oberammergau, halted for a little to see if he could work himself in with the industry already established there of toy-making. At first he made simply frames, and of the plainest sort; soon—perhaps from a reverent bias for still ministering to the glory of the church, but probably quite as much from his trader's perception of the value of an assured market—he began to paint wooden figures of saints, apostles, Holy Virgins, and Christs. These figures at first he imported from the Tyrol, painted them, and sent them back there to be sold. Before long he had a large majority of the Oberammergau villagers working under his direction as both carvers and colorers in this business,—a great enlargement of their previous trade of mere toy-making.

This man had eleven sons. Ten of them were carvers in wood, one was a painter and gilder. All these sons worked together in the continuing and building up of their father's business. One of them, George Lang, perceiving the advantage of widening business connections, struck out for the world at large, established agencies for his house in many countries, chiefly in Russia, and came home to die. He had six sons and four or five daughters, it is not certainly known which; for, as the present George Lang said, telling this genealogical history in his delightful English: "The archives went up in fire once, so they did not know exactly." All six of these sons followed the trades of carving, painting, and gilding. One of them, the youngest, Johann, continued the business, succeeding to his father's position in 1824. He was perhaps the cleverest man of the line. He went from country to country, all over Europe, and had his agents in America, England, Australia, Russia. He was on terms of acquaintance with people in high position everywhere, and was sometimes called "The King of Oberammergau." Again and again the villagers wished to make him burgomaster or magistrate, but he would not accept the position. Nevertheless it finally came to pass that all legal writings of the town, leases, conveyances, etc., made, were signed by his name as well as by the names of the recognized officials. First, "the magistracy of Oberammergau," then, "Johann Lang, Agent," as he persisted in calling himself, ran in the records of the parties to transactions in Oberammergau at that time.