On Old-World Highways / A Book of Motor Rambles in France and Germany and the Record of a Pilgrimage from Land's End to John O'Groats in Britain

by Thos. D. Murphy

Our quarters are almost primitive in their plainness, but they are tolerably clean; the meals, served in a large dining-hall not far away, are only fair. The people of Oberammergau, our landlord says, face a difficult problem in caring for the Passion Play crowds. These come but once in ten years and during the intervening time visitors to the town are comparatively few. Yet the villagers must care for the great throngs of play years, though many apartments and lodging-houses must stand empty during the interval and the only wonder is that charges are so moderate.

The regular population of Oberammergau is less than two thousand, though during the play it presents the appearance of a much larger place. The houses are nearly all of the prevailing Bavarian style, with wide, overhanging eaves and white walls often decorated with brightly colored frescoes. Through the center of the village rushes the Ammer, a clear, swift mountain stream which sometimes works havoc when flooded. The church is modern, but its Moorish tower and rococo decorations do not impress us as especially harmonious and there is little artistic or pleasing in the angular lines of the new theatre. The shops keep open on every day of the week, including Sunday, until nearly midnight. These are filled with carvings, pottery, postcards and endless trinkets for the souvenir-seeking tourist and perhaps yield more profit to the town than the play itself. There are several good-sized inns, but one has no chance of lodging in one of them unless quarters have been engaged months in advance—not very practicable when coming by motor.

OBERAMMERGAU

One will best appreciate the magnificent situation of the village from a vantage-point on one of the mountains which encompass the wide green valley on every side. On the loftiest crag of all gleams a tall white cross—surely a fit emblem to first greet the stranger who comes to Oberammergau. In the center of the vale is the village, the clean white-walled houses grouped irregularly about the huge church, which forms the social center of the place. The dense green of the trees, the brighter green of the window-shutters, the red and gray-tile roofs and the swift river cleaving its way through the town, afford a pleasing variety of color to complete the picture. The surrounding green pastures with the herds of cattle are the property of the villagers—nearly every family of this thrifty community is a landholder. The scene is a quiet, peaceful one, such as suits the character of the people who inhabit this lovely vale.

And these same villagers, simple and unpretentious as they are, will hardly fail to favorably impress the stranger. The Tyrolese costume is everywhere in evidence and there is a large predominance of full-bearded men, for the play-actors are not allowed to resort to wigs and false whiskers. They exhibit the peculiarities of the Swiss rather than the Germans and their manners and customs are simple and democratic in the extreme. While the head of the community is nominally the burgomaster, the real government is vested in the householders. The freedom from envy and strife is indeed remarkable; quarrels are unknown and very few of the inhabitants are so selfish as to seek for honor or wealth. The greatest distinction that can come to any of them is an important part in the play; yet there is never any contention or bitterness over the allotments. It would be hard to find elsewhere a community more seriously happy, more healthful or morally better than Oberammergau.

I shall not write at length of the world-famous play. It has been so well and widely described that I could add but little new. It is interesting as the sole survival of a vast number of mediaeval miracle plays, though it has cast off the coarser features and progressed into a really artistic production. I must first of all plead my own ignorance of the true spirit and marvelous beauty of the play ere I saw it. I thought it the crude production of a community of ignorant peasants who were shrewd enough to turn their religion into a money-making scheme and I freely declared that I would scarcely cross the street to witness it. But when the great chorus of three hundred singers appeared in the prelude that glorious Sunday morning, I began to realize how mistaken I had been. And as the play progressed I was more and more impressed with its solemn sincerity, its artistic staging and its studied harmony of coloring. Indeed, in the last named particular it brought vividly to mind the rich yet subdued tones of Raphael and Michael Angelo, and the effect of the rare old tapestries one occasionally finds in the museums. The tableaux in many cases closely followed some famous picture—as Leonardo DaVinci’s “Last Supper” or Rubens’ “Descent from the Cross,”—all perfectly carried out in coloring and spirit. The costumes were rich and carefully studied, giving doubtless a true picture of the times of Christ. The acting was the perfection of naturalness and the crude and ridiculous features of the early miracle plays—and, not so very long ago, of the Passion Play itself—have been gradually dropped until scarce a trace of them remains. The devil no longer serves the purpose of the clown, having altogether disappeared; and even the tableau of Jonah and the whale, though given in the printed programs, was omitted, evidently from a sense of its ridiculousness. I found myself strangely affected by the simple story of the play. One indeed might imagine that he saw a real bit of the ancient world were it not for the great steel arches bending above him and the telephone wires stretching across the blue sky over the stage.

But I think the best proof of the real human interest of the play is that it held the undivided attention of five thousand spectators for eight long hours on a spring day whose perfect beauty was a strong lure to the open sky. And it did this not only for one day but for weeks, later in the summer requiring an almost continuous daily performance. And, having seen it once, I have no doubt the greater number of spectators would gladly witness it again, for so great a work of art cannot be grasped from a single performance.

Of course Oberammergau has not escaped the critics, but I fancy the majority of them are, like myself before our visit to the town, quite ignorant of the facts as well as the true spirit of the people. The commonest charge is that the play is a money-making scheme on the part of the promoters, but the fact is that the people are poor and remain poor. The actual profits from the play are not large and these are devoted to some public work, as the new theatre, the hospital and the good cause of public roads. The salaries paid the players are merely nominal, in no case exceeding a few hundred marks. The only source of private profit comes from the sale of souvenirs and the entertaining of visitors, but this can not be great, considering that the harvest comes only once in a decade. The play is “commercialized” only to the extent of placing it on a paying basis and if this were not the case there could be no performance. The very fear of this charge kept the villagers up to 1910 from placing their tickets and reservations in the hands of Cook and other tourist agencies, though they were finally persuaded to yield in this as an accommodation to the public. The most effective answer to the assertion that the chief end of the play is money-making may be found in the constant refusal of the villagers to produce it elsewhere than in Oberammergau. Offers of fabulous sums from promoters in England and the United States for the production of the play in the large centers of these countries have been steadily refused, and the actors have pursued their humble avocations in their quiet little town quite content with their meager earnings. Nor have they yielded to the temptation to give the play oftener, though it would be immensely profitable if presented every year or even every alternate year.