OBER-AMMERGAU and the great Passion Play have been much talked about. Ministers, priests, and laymen have discoursed and “stereopticoned” this wonderful play, to say nothing of the graphic descriptions of the mighty army of club-women fortunate enough to be an eye-witness to this great event. It has been so much better told and illustrated, I hesitate to make my poor effort, but more to preserve it in my memory as a little keepsake, cherished most fondly, than to entertain others, I will review it.

“The story that transformed the world” has been told, sung, and reiterated throughout the length and breadth of Christendom; yet never has it been given in a way to so attract and convince, at the same time so far-reaching in its effects, as these simple-minded peasants were able to give it. The whole world has had a lesson far more valuable and lasting than the impressions made by generations of broadcloth orators from high pulpits. If one ever had a conviction or the slightest spiritual awakening in his life, it is here that he is reminded of it, for in the vast daily audiences of over four thousand people sat not one inattentive listener. The grandest rendition of the greatest operas will fail to elicit the attention of some of their audiences; the most climaxing and superb oratory produces restlessness in some of its hearers; but the close attention of this vast audience, with never a whisper of applause, through the long hours from 8.30 A.M. to 5.30 P.M., with one short hour for intermission, was never equalled. Why? Because they were listening to “the story that transformed the world,” having come thousands of miles by land and sea, and braving every obstacle and discouragement to reach this place—the only place in all the world that seems adapted to it, or sacred enough to allow the enactment of such a tragedy. There was no sound in this large audience but the turning of the leaves as they closely followed the translation in English, the play being given in the purest German, only broken by an occasional blowing of the nose, so popular a method for men to relieve their surcharged tear-ducts, while the women, with no apparent desire for concealing their emotions, mopped their eyes incessantly. Upon our arrival we retired to our room, which was opposite the smoke-house and commanded ten marks per day, the highest price paid. I retired between two immense feather beds, with my brain on fire and thoughts forcing themselves into my mind, rendering sleep impossible. How I wished for those I loved, whose perfect knowledge of the story was an every-day delight to their hearts. How selfish I felt with my privilege—sacred privilege! Doubtless thousands were there who had never heard this story before, not knowing whether Jacob was Joseph’s father or Joseph Jacob’s father. But they will never forget the lesson of that day. As we started on our trip to Ober-Ammergau we were filled with the thoughts of the great and only Passion Play, and found our daylight ride from Munich to Ober-Ammergau, through the German Alps, one panoramic view of loveliness. It is impossible to convey to you the charms of these Bavarian highlands, with crystal-clear trout streams, lovely woods of many tints, mountains of wild, weather-worn shape, and, above all, that deep blue sky overhanging the landscape. The mountains are clothed with fir trees,—fine old trees,—making a worthy background for an equally charming picture. The journey from Munich takes about three hours on a “Schnell Zug.” With an unusually long train, we rise upwards into the mountains, passing two beautiful lakes on the way, “Wurm See” and “Staffel See.” After the train left Murnau, we stood on rear platform watching our ascent, with an American, a gentleman much travelled, and truly capable of imparting any desired information. Such a person always gives fresh impetus and appreciation. We here reach higher mountain scenery, up-grade all the way to Ober-Ammergau, with double-header engine. As you enter this sacred village, you can see the theatre off to the left, which stands in a meadow at the far end of the village; the stage is open to wind and weather, but this year for the first time all seats are covered. The new theatre was begun in 1899, the cost of which was borne by the burghers. It consists of six great arches of iron, with wooden coverings and roof, and is completely covered with canvas, colored yellow; saints and prophets are painted on the canvased walls. The seats are elevated to the rear, affording each one a good view. The performance goes on uninterruptedly, unless it rains so hard that nothing can be seen. On Passion Play day you have to rise early, as the play begins early in the morning, and the first half ends at 12 o’clock, with an hour for luncheon. It is resumed at 1.30 P.M. and closes at 5.30 P.M. The band parades the street at 6 o’clock in the morning, and at 7 the theatre begins to fill. You can walk from almost any part of the village to the theatre. Our early Sunday morning walk was along the bank of the swift, clear stream which rushes through its narrow banks over the meadow. The villagers can here be seen washing their dishes and their clothes in the stream. It was all a scene and sensation never to be forgotten. It is always cool up here; snow falls knee-deep in October and stays on until May without thawing. You order your ticket for the play at the same time that you do your room. Every room in the village has a ticket allotted to it; the ticket is given according to the price paid for the room. You cannot purchase a ticket unless you take a room. It is necessary for you to remain in the village over night. The play beginning at 8 A.M. necessitates the stay in the village, which was certainly unique if one didn’t favor sharing his boudoir with the cows. The rooms were three marks to ten marks. We had a ten-mark room, which entitled us to the best seat.

Ober-Ammergau is a beautiful little village, standing in a level valley of the Bavarian Alps, which made the trip here one of beauty; at no place did we enjoy the scenic beauty of the Alps more than on our ride to the “Linderhof” Palace, a delicious ride from Ober-Ammergau, the day before we witnessed the play. Through this village the Ammer runs—the swift Ammer river, clear as crystal. The population of Ober-Ammergau is not more than 1300. Everybody has a cow. It is the ideal to be realized—thirty acres and a cow. There are about six hundred cows in the village, who use the main street for the coming-home milking time. They all have bells, as well as the horses and sheep. These latter are so far outnumbered that they are not noticed. The presentation of the Passion Play is arranged and performed on the basis of the entire Scriptures, with only one object in view—the edification of the Christian world. “Instead of setting forth the Gospel story as it stands in the New Testament, they take as the fundamental idea the connection of the Passion, incident by incident, with the types, figures, and prophecies of the Old Testament. The whole of the Old Testament is thus made, as it were, the massive pedestal for the Cross. The course of the narrative of the Passion Play is perpetually interrupted or illustrated by scenes from the older Bible, which are supposed to prefigure the next event to be represented on the stage. In order to explain the meaning of the typical tableaux and to prepare the audience for the scene which follows, recourse is had to an ingenious arrangement whereby the interludes between each scene are filled up with singing in parts and in chorus by a choir of guardian angels, the orchestra being concealed from view. Whenever the curtain falls, they resume their old places and the singing proceeds. It is a fine attempt at grand opera made by these peasant villagers; the music is very impressive, and the oftener you hear it the more you feel its force and pathos. Their costumes are very effective. In the centre of the stage, bright scarlet, with white undertunics with golden edging, yellow leather sandals, stockings same color as the robes which fall from their shoulders, held in place by gold cord and tassel; all wearing coronets with cross in centre, producing a brilliant effect. Twice are these brilliant robes exchanged for black, immediately before and after the Crucifixion; the bright robes are resumed at the close, when the play closes with a burst of hallelujahs and a jubilant triumph over the Ascension of our Lord.” As we walked away, still under the spell that holds one from start to finish, we sat down at one of the many little tables in front of the homes on the sidewalk to refresh ourselves. We fortunately were joined by an elegant gentleman, a German general, late from the Boer War. He was trying equally as hard to understand our crude German as we were his miserable English. He was as refreshing as the big stein of good MÜnchener beer which we, with thousands of others, were making disappear. We were in sight, all day long, of hundreds of priests in their clerical robes, who were equally enjoying the beer, as well as most of the players, who were anxious to quench their thirst after their long engagement.

To return to the villagers. They were washing their dishes in the stream that flows through village, having come down only a few steps from their homes. This river would seem like a branch, were it not for its swiftness. We could hardly be satisfied to think we could not drink from this clear mountain stream. It certainly is an ideal picture of an ideal village. The clean white walls of the houses with their green window-shutters could be seen grouped round the church, which, with its mosque-like minaret, forms the living centre of the place, architecturally and morally the keystone of the arch. Seen at sunset or sunrise, the red-tiled roofs, quaint in shape, under the shade of the surrounding hills, is most beautiful. The homes of most of the players are also the homes of their cattle. The people occupy upper floors. We were at the foot of the lofty “Koful” Crag, where, high overhead, stood the white cross. In the irregular streets (for streets and sidewalks are one), can be seen Tyrolese mountaineers, strolling and laughing, in their picturesque costumes, who always bare their heads and remain so, until the bells, pealing forth the solemn angelus hours, cease. They seem to be more Swiss than German. They inhabit the mass of mountains which divides the flat lands of Germany from the plains of Italy, and are a fine species of the human race. They are an isolated little community, secured by its rocky ramparts against any intermeddling of distant governments, and are necessarily independent and live under a most simple but sound government. Nearly every man is a landholder, the poorest owning three acres; the richest, sixty acres.

THE VOW

As far back, it is said, as the twelfth century, there has been a Passion Play performed in the little village, but towards the close of the sixteenth century the wars that wasted Germany left but little time to the dwellers of these remote highlands for dramatic representation. They played dreadful havoc with their homes and fortunes. Among these unfortunates were the Bavarians of the Tyrol, and as an after consequence of the wide-wasting Thirty Years’ War, a great pestilence broke out in the villages surrounding Ober-Ammergau. Whole families were swept off. In one village two married couples were left alive; a visitation somewhat similar to our “Black Death.” While village after village fell a prey to its ravages, the people of Ober-Ammergau remained untouched, and enforced a vigorous quarantine against all the outside world. As always happens, one person, Casper Schuchler, broke through the sanitary regulations. This good man, who was working in the plague-stricken village of Eschenlohe, felt an uncontrollable desire to return to his wife and children, who were living in Ober-Ammergau. The terrible retribution followed. In two days he was dead, and the plague, which he had brought with him, spread with such fatal haste from house to house that in thirty-three days eighty-four other villagers had perished, all sanitary measures having failed. Unless the plague were stayed, there would soon not be enough to bury the dead. They assembled to discuss their desperate plight. It was said, “It was as men looking into the hollow eye-sockets of death.” They cried aloud to God, they would repent their sins, and in token of their penitence, and as a sign of gratitude for their deliverance, if they were delivered, they would every ten years perform this Passion Play. From that hour it ceased; those who were already smitten with the plague recovered. There were no more victims of the pestilence. It is said that not since “Moses lifted up the brazen serpent in the wilderness” has there been so signal a deliverance from mortal illness on such simple terms. Thus it was that the Passion Play became a fixed institution in Ober-Ammergau, and has been performed with few variations, due to wars, ever since. The performance of the Passion Play, like the angel with the drawn sword which stands at the summit of the castle of San Angelo, is the pious recognition of a miraculous interposition for the stay of the pestilence. But for Casper Schuchler it would have gone the way of all other Passion plays. He sinned and suffered, but out of his sin and sorrow has come the Passion Play, the one solitary survivor of what was at one time a great instrument of religious teaching almost throughout Europe. As we returned to the village in the quiet of the evening, we were awe-stricken by the perfectly blue, cloudless sky over-reaching these sacred hills. The crowd of that day had departed; all was peace; the whole dramatic troupe were pursuing the even tenor of their ordinary lives. Most of the best players were wood-carvers, others peasants or local tradesmen, who were named Matthew, Luke, and John from their cradles, imitating the lives of these characters from their birth up. Their royal robes, or rabbinical costumes, were laid aside, and they would go about their work as ordinary mortals. But what a revelation, when you consider the latent capacity—musical, dramatical, intellectual—that a single mountain village can furnish under capable guidance! Just think,—tinkers, tailors, bakers, and ploughmen being able to produce such a play! It proves mankind is not lacking in native capacity. With a guided, active brain, patient love, and careful education, and the stimulus and inspiration of a great idea, nothing seems impossible.

We were driven in “Ein SpÄnner” (one-horse carriage) to Linderhof Palace by a young Tyrolese, with a little chicken feather in his Alpine hat. Knowing that all villagers were going through the Passion Play, I asked why he was not there. He said “he was not born in Ober-Ammergau, therefore could not take part in the play.” He said this in German, and seemed quite pleased that we could understand. On our return trip from Linderhof he pointed out Prince Leopold in his carriage, with advance-guard. The roadway was quite narrow at this place, so we took a good look at him. He was quite gray,—the successor of the mad King Ludwig. They gallantly raised their chapeaux, but we impolite Americans were so intense in our desire to see nobility, that we in turn forgot our breeding. All along the various waysides pious souls have erected shrines. The contours and outlines of those splendid mountains were as graceful as mobile waves: some rugged and sharp crags hidden by the clouds—so high; others clearly defined in color against the sky. If there was anything inharmonious, the atmosphere—that friendly veil—toned all down into a repose of matchless beauty. The atmosphere here seems to act as a drapery, dipped in dyes of the gods. You can’t account for the prismatic coloring, often seen but never told, by pen or pencil or brush; not just plain, simple, thin sunshine, but a royal profusion of a golden substance; a sort of transforming quality,—a vesture of splendor. Amidst this beauty rests the palace of the late mad king, which seems golden from the covering of the exterior to the exquisite golden interior. Even the waters of its fountains and lakes spraying through figures of gold. This palace, no larger than a metropolitan club-house, contains everything in the way of art that an abnormal imagination, backed by the coffers of a kingdom, could suggest and buy. The beautiful marble statue of the young king stands in front of the palace on a marble elevation, with a beautiful marble peristyle for a background. The ermine on the royal robe is so perfectly executed in marble as to cause a desire to run one’s fingers through the fur of same.

“Schloss Linderhof” we have all possibly heard more about than the average castle. It shows the characteristic as well as wilful extravagance of their late king, Ludwig II., for whom it was erected. It is a fine edifice in rococo style. The interior displays a magnificence of ornament and a wealth of color and gold which render it too ornate for the taste of some; but to me it was ideal, both as to size, decorations, and appointment.

The grotto is certainly worth mention. It is made in the side of a mountain, and the walk lies under a shaded arbor of continuous beauty. The entrance to the cave is one huge swinging rock, cut out of a mountainside, and hung on a pivot, so as to open and close itself. Within were the stalactites of the grotto, with their beautiful masses, out of which twinkled myriads of electric lights. On an artificial lake was an improvised stage with perfect appointments, where the King and his friends viewed the grand opera from his golden barge that Cleopatra could never have rivalled. Just outside of this grandeur, which no human soul inhabited, was a road-house, where the jolly mountaineers and tourists were eating and drinking, no doubt happier than the king and all his grandeur had ever been.

It is indeed a strange fate that seems to pursue King Leopold’s family: one sensational climax after another; brought to death through violence in tragedies so unsavory that it has been found preferable to leave them enveloped with a veil of mystery. Surely a strange curse seems to rest upon the reigning house of Belgium. The curtain is constantly ringing down on Europe’s royal life tragedies; dethroned, widowed by assassin, bereaved, and victims of all the fates and furies of Greek mythology; and now Victoria, Empress Frederick of Germany. Surely there has been little of late in royal and imperial annals to inspire common people with envy of the exalted personages born to the purple, and certainly will cause nobody to long for a crown.

We have now seen the German Alps,—the best time to see them is before visiting Switzerland,—and still have the pleasure before us of the loveliness of the Swiss Alpine heights.