German village keeps up medieval tradition
Jon Griffin visits Germany to see how a Bavarian village is preparing to keep up a medieval tradition.
It’s a once in a decade world phenomenon – a glorious celebration of the most famous story of all time which has been running for hundreds of years longer than the Mousetrap. Quite a billing admittedly, but the Oberammergau Passion Play is in a category of its own when it comes to artistic longevity.
Agatha Christie’s West End thriller is billed on its theatre website as the longest-running show in the world. But forget the fiction and simply examine the remarkable facts surrounding the Passion Play.
You have to go back to 1633 to discover the original incarnation of the Oberammergau play, and even further back, to the very birth of Jesus Christ, to unearth its roots.
The play originates from a vow taken at the time of the Thirty Years War in central Europe, which had resulted in widespread poverty and disease.
As if that were not enough in those bloodthirsty times, a terrible plague swept through the continent, claiming many thousands of lives. The tiny village of Oberammagau in Bavaria saw 80 of its inhabitants wiped out and after months of suffering the locals were desperate, with one in two families mourning relatives lost to the disease.
At the village’s overflowing cemetery, mourners made a vow, promising to put on a play portraying the suffering and death of Jesus to try to keep the plague at bay and please the Almighty.
Erecting a symbol of Christ on poles and crossbars, they pledged to re-enact the Passion Play every 10 years. There were no further deaths in the village and the promise has been dutifully kept, more or less, ever since.
At Whitsun 1634, the Oberammergauers first performed the Play of the Suffering, Death and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ on a stage constructed in the cemetery, directly above the graves of recent plague victims. It was the start of a fascinating tradition.
For the forthcoming 2010 production, which will run from May 15 to October 3, script editors Christian Stuckl and Otto Huber have revised the text of the play, questioning how the Nazareth reformer managed to turn the powers of the day against him while still attracting a loyal following. New stage sets and costumes are being designed while the second part of the play will be performed in the evening in accordance with the wishes of the villagers. The play will begin at 2.30pm and, following a three-hour dinner interval, end at 10.30pm.
Only people born in the village or who have lived there for at least 20 years are allowed to take part and, of Oberammergau’s 5,200 or so current inhabitants, around 2,500 will be involved with the production, as performers, seamstresses, stage hands, musicians or in other roles. And, starting on Ash Wednesday last year, the chosen actors grow their hair – and men their beards – as no wigs or false beards are allowed, to capture a little of the fashionable styles of more than 2,000 years ago.
We travelled to Oberammergau, courtesy of German airline Lufthansa, for a pre-Christmas visit to Bavaria to view the preparations for this extraordinary once-in-a-decade performance of art.
The village is set in the valley of the River Amner, amongst lush meadows and gentle Alpine foothills, ringed by the craggy peaks of the Alps.
It’s little more than an hour’s drive away from Munich and its bustling international airport, yet the contrast to big city life is startling.
Picturesque parks and gardens abound, while the air really does seem as clear and pure as the film landscape Julie Andrews scampered across in The Sound of Music all those years ago.
