The Alps are not confined to Switzerland. They fill that little country full and overflow in all directions, into Austria, Italy, Germany, and France. Beautiful everywhere, these mountains are nowhere more charming than in Southern Bavaria. Gra.s.s-carpeted valleys, lakes as blue as the sky above them, dark slopes of pine and fir, over-topped by crags of gray limestone dashed by perpetual snow, the Bavarian Oberland is one of the most delightful regions in all Europe. When Attila and the Huns invaded Germany fifteen centuries ago, it is said that their cry was, "On to Bavaria--on to Bavaria! for there dwells the Lord G.o.d himself!"
In the heart of these mountains, shut off from the highways of travel by great walls of rock, lies the valley of the little river Ammer. Its waters are cold and clear, for they flow from mountain springs, and its willow-shaded eddies are full of trout. At first a brawling torrent, its current grows more gentle as the valley widens and the rocks recede, and at last the little river flows quietly with broad windings through meadows carpeted with flowers. On these meadows, a couple of miles apart, lie the twin villages of the Ammer Valley--the one world-famous, the other unheard of beyond the sound of its church-bells--Ober and Unter Ammergau.
Long, straggling, Swiss-like towns, these villages on the Ammer meadows are. You may find a hundred such between Innsbruck and Zurich. Stone houses, plastered outside and painted white, stand close together, each one pa.s.sing gradually backward into woodshed, barn, and stable. You may lose your way in the narrow, crooked streets, as purposeless in their direction as the footsteps of the cows who first surveyed them.
Oberammergau is a cleaner town than most, with a handsomer church, and a general evidence of local pride and modest prosperity. Frescoes on the walls of the houses here and there, paintings of saints and angels, bear witness to a love of beauty and to the prevalence of a religious spirit. These pictures, still bright after more than a century"s wear, go back to the time when the peasant boy, Franz Zwink, of Oberammergau, mixed paints for a famous artist who painted the interior of the Ettal Monastery and the village church. The boy learned the art as well as the process, and when his master was gone, he covered the walls of his native town with pictures such as made men famous in other times and in other lands. The spirit of the Italian masters was his, and the work of Zwink at Oberammergau has been called "a wandering wave from the mighty sea of the Renaissance which has broken on a far-off coast."
The Pa.s.sion Play at Oberammergau has been characterized as a relic of medieval times--the last remains of the old Miracle Play. This is true, in the sense of historical continuity, and in that sense alone.
The spirit of the times has penetrated even to this isolated valley, and its Pa.s.sion Play is as much a product of our century as the poetry of Tennyson. Miracle Plays were shown at Oberammergau and in the town about it more than five hundred years ago, but the Pa.s.sion Play of to-day is not like them. The imps and devils and all the machinery of superst.i.tion are gone. Harmony has taken the place of crudity, and the Christ of Oberammergau is the Christ of modern conception. The Miracle Play, dead or dying everywhere else, has lived and been perfected at Oberammergau.
It has been pre-eminently the work of the Church of Rome to teach the common people, and to train them to obedience. In its teaching it has made use of every means which could serve its purposes. Didactic teaching is not effective with tired and sleepy peasants. Sermons soothe, rather than instruct, after a week of hard labor in the fields.
Hence comes the need of object-teaching, if teaching is to be real.
Images have been used in this way in the Catholic Church--not as objects to be worshiped, but as representations of sacred things.
Paintings have served the same purpose. The n.o.blest paintings in the world have been wrought to this end. It was in such lines alone that art could find worthy recognition. In like manner, processions and "Pa.s.sion[1] Plays" have served the same purpose.
The old Miracle Plays were grotesque enough--made by common people for the instruction of common people. Even amid the pathos of divine suffering the peasants must be amused. Care was taken that the character of Judas should meet this demand. So Judas was made at once a traitor and a clown. His pathway was beset by devils of the most ridiculous sort. And when at last he hung himself on the stage, his body burst open, and the long links of sausages which represented intestines were devoured by the imps amid the laughter and delight of the peasant audience. Now all this has pa.s.sed away. Wise and learned men have taken the play in hand, and have left it a monument to their piety and good taste. Everything grotesque, or barbarous, or ridiculous has been eliminated. All else is subordinated to a faithful and artistic representation of the life and acts of Christ. Stately prose and the language of the Gospel narratives have been subst.i.tuted for doggerel verse. As a work of art, the Pa.s.sion Play deserves a high place in the literature of Germany.
One striking feature of the Pa.s.sion Play is the absence of superst.i.tious elements. Beyond the dominating influence of the purpose of G.o.d, which is brought into strong prominence, there is almost nothing which suggests the supernatural or miraculous. That little even is forgotten in the intensity of human interest. The Devil and his machinations have vanished entirely. One sees in the religious customs of the people of Oberammergau few of the superst.i.tions common among the peasant cla.s.ses of other parts of Europe. In his little book, "Oberammergau und Seine Bewohner," Pastor Daisenberger says: "Superst.i.tious beliefs and customs one does not find here." Even the ordinary ghost-stories and traditions of Germany are outworn and forgotten in this town.
In 1634, so the tradition says, the black death came to Oberammergau, and one-tenth of the inhabitants died. The others made a vow, "a trembling vow, breathed in a night of tears," that if G.o.d should stay the plague, they would, on every tenth year, repeat in full, for the edification of the people, the Tragedy of the Pa.s.sion. Other communities might build temples or monasteries, or could undertake pilgrimages; it should be their duty to show "The Way of the Cross."
When this vow was taken, the pestilence ceased, and not another person perished. This was regarded by the people as a visible sign of divine approval. Thus every tenth year for nearly three centuries, ever since the time when the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, with varying fortunes and interruptions, the Pa.s.sion Play has been represented in Oberammergau.
The play in its present form is essentially the work of Josef Alois Daisenberger, who was for twenty years pastor of the church at Oberammergau. In this town he was born in the last year of the last century, and there he died, in 1888, revered and beloved by all who came near him.
"I wrote the play," Pastor Daisenberger said, "for the love of my Divine Redeemer, and with no other object in view than the edification of the Christian world."
The first aim of the Pa.s.sion Play has been the training of the common people. To its various representations came the peasants of Bavaria, Wurtemberg, and the Tyrol, on horses, on donkeys, on foot, a long and difficult journey across mountain-walls and through great forests. It was the memory and inspiration of a lifetime to have seen the Pa.s.sion Play.
About forty years ago the tourist world discovered this scene; and since then, on the decennial year, an ever-increasing interest has been felt, an ever-growing stream of travel has been turned toward the Ammer Valley. All, prince or peasant, are treated alike by the simple, honest people, and the same preparation is made for the reception of all. The purpose of the play should be kept in mind in any just criticism. To have the right to discuss it at all, one must treat it in a spirit of sympathy.
We came into Oberammergau on Friday, the 1st day of August, 1890, to witness the performance of the Sunday following. The city of Munich, seventy miles away, was crowded with visitors, all bound to the Pa.s.sion Play. The express-train of twenty cars which carried us from Munich was crowded with people from almost every part of the civilized world.
At Oberau, six miles from Oberammergau, at the foot of the Ettal Mountain, we left the railway, and there took part in a general scramble for seats in the carriages. The fine new road winds through dark pine woods, climbing the hill in long zigzags above wild chasms, past the old monastery of Ettal, and then slowly descends to the soft Ammer meadows. The great peak of the Kofel is ever in front, while the main chain of the Bavarian Alps closes the view behind.
Arrived in the little village, all was bustle and confusion. The streets were full of people--some busy in taking care of strangers, others sauntering idly about, as if at a country fair. Young women, in black bodices and white sleeves, welcomed the visitors at the little inns or served them in the shops. Everywhere were young men in Tyrolese holiday attire--green coats, black slouch hats, with a feather or sprig of Edelweiss in the hat-band, and with trousers, like those of the Scottish Highlanders, which end hopelessly beyond the reach of either shoes or stockings. Besides the rustics and the tourists, one met here and there upon the streets men whose grave demeanor and long black hair resting on their shoulders proclaimed them to be actors in the Pa.s.sion Play.
On Sunday morning we were awakened by the sound of a cannon planted at the foot of the Kofel, a sharp, conical, towering mountain, some two thousand feet above the town, and bearing on its summit a tall gilded cross. It was cold and rainy, but that made no difference with the audience or the play. At eight o"clock, when the cannon sounds again, all are in their places, and the play begins. It lasts for eight hours--from eight o"clock in the morning to half-past five in the afternoon, with a single interruption of an hour and a half at noon.
The stage is wide and ample. Its central part is covered, but the front, which represents the fields and the streets of Jerusalem, is in the open air. This feature lends the play a special charm. On the left, across the stage, over which the fitful rain-clouds chase one another, we can plainly see the long, green slope of Ettal mountain, dotted from bottom to top with herdmen"s huts or _chalets_, and on the summit a tall pine-tree, standing out alone above all its brethren. On the other side appear the wild crags of the Kofel, its gilded cross glistening in the sunshine above the morning mists. Swallows fly in and out among the painted palm-trees, their twitter sounding sharply above the music of the chorus. The little birds raise their voices to make themselves heard to each other.
As the play progresses the intense truthfulness of the people of Oberammergau steadily grows upon us. For many generations the best intellects and n.o.blest lives in the town have been devoted to the sole end of giving a worthy picture of the life and acts of Christ. Each generation of actors has left this picture more n.o.ble than it ever was before. Their work has been wrought in a spirit of serious truthfulness, which in itself places the Oberammergau stage in a cla.s.s by itself, above and beyond all other theaters. Everything is real, and stands for what it is. Kings and priests are dressed, not in flimsy tinsel, but in garments such as real kings and priests may have worn. And so no artificial light or glare of fireworks is needed to make these costumes effective. And this genuineness enables these simple players to produce effects which the richest theaters would scarcely dare to undertake; and all this in the open air, in glaring sunshine or in pouring rain. The players themselves can scarcely be called actors. In their way, they are strong beyond all mere actors, and for this reason--that they do not seem to act. From childhood they have grown up in the parts they play. Childish voices learn the solemn music of the chorus in the schools, and childish forms mingle in the triumphal procession in the regular church festivals. All the effects of acc.u.mulated tradition, all the results of years of training tend to make of them, not actors at all, but living figures of the characters they represent. And we can look back over the history of Oberammergau, and see how, through the growth of this purpose of its life, it has come to be unique among all the towns of Europe.
Many have wondered that in so small a town there should be so many men of striking personality. The reason for this is to be sought in the operation of natural selection. In the ordinary German village, the best men find no career. They go from home to the cities or to foreign lands, in search of the work and influence not to be secured at home.
The strongest go, and the dull remain. All, this is reversed at Oberammergau. Only the native citizen takes part in the play. Those who are stupid or vicious are excluded from it. Not to take part in the play is to have no reason for remaining in Oberammergau. To be chosen for an important part is the highest honor the people know. So the influences at work retain the best and exclude the others.
Moreover, the leading families of Oberammergau, the families of Zwink, Lang, Rendl, Mayr, Lechner, Diemer, etc., are closely related by intermarriage. These people are all of one blood--all of one great family. This family is one of actors, serious, intelligent, devoted, and all these virtues are turned to effect in their acting.
This work is that of a lifetime. Little boys and girls come on the stage in the arms of the mothers--matrons of Jerusalem. Older boys shout in the rabble and become at last Roman soldiers or servants of the High Priest. Still later, the best of them are ranged among the Apostles, and the rare genius becomes Pilate, John, Judas, or the Christ.
In the house of mine host, the chief of the money-changers in the temple, the eldest daughter was called Magdalena. In 1890, at fourteen, she was leader of the girls in the tableau of the falling manna. In 1900, she may, perhaps, become Mary Magdalen, the end in life which her parents have chosen for her.
After the cannon sounds, the chorus of guardian spirits (_Schutzengeister_) comes forward to make plain by speech or action the meaning of the coming scenes. This chorus is modeled after the chorus in the Greek plays. It is composed of twenty-four singers, the best that Oberammergau has, all picturesquely clad in Greek costumes,--white tunics, trimmed with gold, and over these an outer mantle of some deep, quiet shade, the whole forming a perfect harmony of soft Oriental colors. Stately and beautiful the chorus is throughout. The time which in ordinary theaters is devoted to the arranging of scenes behind a blank curtain is here filled by the songs and recitations of the guardian spirits. Once in the play the chorus appears in black, in keeping with the dark scenes they come forth to foretell. But at the end the bright robes are resumed, while the play closes with a burst of triumph from their lips.
At the beginning of each act, the leader of the singers, the village schoolmaster, comes forth from the chorus, and the curtain parts, revealing a tableau ill.u.s.trative of the coming scenes. These tableaux, some thirty or forty in number, are taken from scenes in the Old Testament which are supposed to prefigure acts in the life of Christ.
Thus the treachery of Judas is prefigured by the sale of Joseph by his brethren. The farewell at Bethany has its type in the mourning bride in the Song of Solomon; the Crucifixion, in the brazen serpent of Moses. Sometimes the connection between the tableaux and the scenes is not easily traced; but even then the pictures justify themselves by their own beauty. Often five hundred people are brought on the stage at once. These range in size from the tall and patriarchal Moses to children of two years. But, old or young, there is never a muscle or a fold of garment out of place. The first tableau represents Adam and Eve driven from Eden by the angel with the flaming sword. It was not easy to believe that these figures were real. They were as changeless as wax. They did not even wink. The critic may notice that the hands of the women are large and brown, and the children"s faces not free from sunburn. But there is no other hint that these exquisite pictures are made up from the village boys and girls, those who on other days milk the cows and scrub the floors in the little town. The marvelously varied costumes and the grouping of these tableaux are the work of the drawing-teacher, Ludwig Lang. Without appearing anywhere in the play, this gifted man makes himself everywhere felt in the delicacy of his feeling for harmonies of color.
At the beginning of the play the leader of the chorus addresses the audience as friends and brothers who are present for the same reason as the actors themselves--namely, to a.s.sist devoutly at the mystery to be set forth, the story of the redemption of the world. The purpose is, as far as may be, to share the sorrows of the Saviour and to follow him step by step on the way of his sufferings to the cross and sepulcher.
Then comes the prologue, solemnly intoned, of which the most striking words are these:
"Nicht ewig zurnet Er Ich will, so spricht der Herr, Den Tod des Sunders nicht."
"He will not be angry forever. I, saith the Lord, will not the death of the sinner. I will forgive him; he shall live, and in my Son"s blood shall be reconciled."
When its part is finished the chorus retires, and the Pa.s.sion Play begins with the entry of Christ into Jerusalem. Far in the distance we hear the music, "Hail to thee, O David"s son!" Then follows a seemingly endless procession of men, women, and children who wave palm-leaves and shout hosannas. One little flaxen-haired girl, dressed in blue, and carrying a long, slender palm-leaf, is especially striking in her beauty and naturalness.
At last He comes, riding sidewise upon a beast that seems too small for his great stature. He is dressed in a purple robe, over which is a mantle of rich crimson. Beside him, in red and olive-green, is the girlish-looking youth, Peter Rendl, who takes the part of Saint John.
Behind him follow his disciples, each with the pilgrim"s staff. Two of these are more conspicuous than the others. One is a white-haired, eager old man, wearing a mantle of olive-green. The other, younger, dark, sullen, and tangle-haired, dressed in a robe of saffron over dull yellow, is the only person in the throng out of harmony with the prevailing joyousness.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Peter Rendl as Saint John.]
Followed by the people, who stand apart in reverence as he pa.s.ses among them, Christ approaches the temple. His face is pale, in marked contrast to his abundant black hair. His expression is serious, or even care-worn, less mild than in the usual pictures of Jesus, but certainly in keeping with the scenes of the Pa.s.sion Play. A fine, strong, masterful man of great stature and immense physical strength is the wood-carver, Josef Mayr, who now for three successive decades has taken this part. A man of attractive presence and lofty bearing, one whom every eye follows as he goes about the town on the round of his daily duties, yet simple-hearted and modest, as becomes one who takes on himself not only the dress but the name and figure of the Saviour.
Essays have been written on "Christus" Mayr and his conception of Jesus, and I can only a.s.sent to the general impression. To me it seems that Mayr"s thought of Christ is one which all must accept. He appears as "one driven by the Spirit,"--the great mild teacher, the man who can afford to be silent before kings and before mobs, and to whom the pains of Calvary are not more deep than the sorrows of Gethsemane, the man who comes to do the work of his Father, regardless alike of human praise or of human contempt. The great strength of the presentation is that it brings to the front the essentials of Christ"s life and death.
There is no suggestion of theological subtleties nor of the ceremonies of any church. It is simply true and terrible.
From one of his fellow-actors, I learned this of Josef Mayr. He has always been what he is now, a hand-worker ("_gemeiner Arbeiter_") in Oberammergau. He has never been away from his native town except once, when he went as a workman to Vienna, and once when, in 1870, the play was interrupted by the war with France, and Mayr himself was taken into the army. Out of respect to his art, he was never sent to the front, but kept in the garrison at Munich. When the war was over, and he came back, in 1871, the grateful villagers resumed the play as their "best method of thanking G.o.d who had given them the blessings of victory and peace."
Canon Farrar, of Westminster, has given us the best and most sympathetic account yet published of the various actors. Of Mayr he said: "It is no small testimony to the goodness and the ability of Josef Mayr that in his representation of Christ he does not offend us by a single word or a single gesture. If there were in his manner the slightest touch of affectation or of self-consciousness; if there were the remotest suspicion of a strut in his gait, we should be compelled to turn aside in disgust. As it is, we forget the artist altogether.
For it is easy to see that Josef Mayr forgets himself, and wishes only to give a faithful picture of the events in the Gospel story."
As the Master enters the temple, he finds that its courts are filled with a noisy throng of money-changers, peddlers, and dealers in animals for sacrifice. He is filled with wrath and indignation. In a commanding tone, he orders them to take their own and leave this holy place. "There is room enough for trading outside. "My house," thus saith the Lord, "shall be a house of prayer to all the people." Ye have made it a den of thieves." ("_Zur Rauberhohle, habt Ihr es gemacht!_")
The peddlers pay no attention to his protest. Then, with a sudden burst of wrath, he breaks upon them, overturning their tables, scattering their gold upon the floor, and beating them with thongs.
The animals kept for sacrifice are released. The sheep scamper backward to the rear of the stage, and escape through the open door.
The white doves fly out over the heads of the spectators, and are lost against the green slopes of the Kofel.
The play now follows the Gospel narrative very closely. It is, in fact, the Gospel story, with only such changes as fit it for continuous presentation. Events aside from the current of the story, such as the wedding at Cana and the raising of Lazarus, are omitted. There are few long speeches. The leading features of what may be called the plot, the wrath of the money-changers, the fierce hatred of the Pharisees, the avarice of Judas, which makes him their tool, are all sharply emphasized.
The next scene introduces us to the High Council of the Jews, and to its leading spirit, Caiaphas. Caiaphas is represented by the burgomaster of the village, Johann Lang. "No medieval pope," says Canon Farrar, "could p.r.o.nounce his sentences with more dignity and verve. He is what has been called "that terrible creature, the perfect priest."" Violent, unforgiving, and harsh, he is the soul of the conspiracy. His strong determination is reflected in the weak malignity of his colleague, Annas, as well as in the priests and scribes. "While he lives," Caiaphas says, "there is no peace for Israel. It is better that one man should die, that the whole nation perish not."
We next behold Jesus accompanied by his disciples on the road toward the house of Simon of Bethany. As they walk along, he talks sadly of his approaching death. None of them can understand his words; for to them he has been victorious over all his enemies. "A word from thee,"
says Peter, "and they are crushed." "I see not," says Thomas, "why thou speakest so often of sorrow and death. Do we not read in the prophets that Christ lives forever? Thou canst not die, for with thy power thou wakest even the dead." Even John declares that Christ"s words are dark and dismal, while he and his a.s.sociates use every effort to cheer the Master.
At the house of Simon of Bethany, Mary Magdalen breaks the costly dish of ointment. Judas, who carries the slender purse of the disciples, is vexed at the waste, and talks of all the good the value of this ointment might have done if given to the poor.
Very carefully worked out is the character of Judas, represented by Johann Zwink, the miller of Oberammergau, who ten years ago took the part of Saint John. The people of Oberammergau regard Zwink as the most gifted of all their actors; for he can, they say, play any part.
("_Er spielt alle Rolle._") Gregor Lechner, who in his younger days had the part of Judas, is now Simon of Bethany. Of all the actors of Oberammergau, the people told us, Lechner is the most beloved ("_bestens beliebt_").
[Ill.u.s.tration: Johann Zwink as Judas.]