Oberammergau : Where a vow started with a Pandemic and ironically postponed with a Pandemic

20/10/2020

Manisha Deb Sarkar*

Oberammergau

Our Route for Oberammergau from Herrsching in Germany

It was a comfortable cool morning in June, 2017 when I set out for Oberammergau from Herrsching in Germany. While driving along the silk smooth road that skirts through the eye soothing greeneries a sudden feeling of happiness filled my mind – that it is not a dream but a reality and I am travelling in the Bavaria state of Germany, a place so renowned for its picturesque natural beauty.

On the way

Reached

My destination Oberammergau is a small town located in the foothills of the Alps cladded with dark green shaded coniferous trees. Mount Köefel is the signature of the town. It is some 61 km and about an hour long journey from Herrsching where I started my drive.

Mount Köefel

Mount Köefel

I had little idea about the village. Before sharing Oberammergau in relation with the pandemic situation I prefer to give you some idea of its basic features. Oberammergau is a municipality in the district of Garmisch - Partenkirchen, in Bavaria, Germany. 

Map

Area of the village is 30.06 km² and the elevation is 837 metre. Population density is 180 persons /square km. The small town on the Ammer River is well-known for its woodcarvers and woodcarvings, wall paintings (frescoes) on the house walls and across the world for its 380 year tradition of mounting Passion Plays.

 

The Church

The Wood Sculpture of Crucified Christ

Wood carving: Let me give you some details about this world famous wood carving art of the town. Wood carving is a long traditional art form of this place. It is basically the home of this art form since a long time. Wolfram Aichele is a celebrated German artist whose famous art piece ‘Christ on a donkey’ can be seen in the church of St. Peter and St. Paul. While strolling along the cobbled streets of Oberammergau I found a dozen of woodcarvers’ shop.

Souvenir Shop

One of these, where I decided to enter, had a good display of plenty of carved out wooden show pieces ranging from religious subjects to common toys, portraits and souvenirs of many types. A small wooden show piece of a farmer from medieval age caught my eyes and I bought it for myself at an affordable price. A famous religious art like a wooden statue of Our Lady of Good Voyage from Oberammergau stands in the Seaport Shrine in Boston, Massachusetts.

Wood Carving Front

Wood Carving Back

Brief history of woodcarving in Oberammergau:

These eye-catching intricate detailed work of art and skill aroused my curiosity to peep into its past. I came to know a lot about the rich tradition of this heritage artwork. Surprisingly, this art form along with another typical art form of this town (the exterior fresco painting on several house walls) is also related with venture of the people of Oberammergau to take a vow to stop deaths due to a pandemic situation that happened long before. The vow was the involvement of the town people in ‘The Passion Play’ performed on a decadal interval. This Play later turned into another tradition of Oberammergau and was also a reason for its popularity worldwide. The wood carvers along with the painters were all became a part with the ‘Play’ as the carvers carve out the wooden props of the Play and the painters paint the exterior walls of the town houses on the occasion of the Play performance. 

Wood carved scene of the ‘The Passion Play’

Wood carved scene of the ‘The Passion Play’

The work of Oberammergau wood carvers was admired as far back as 16th century. The Upper Bavarian municipality is famous for its wooden religious figurines and nativity scenes. The local artists also have lovely items that are more modern.

The earliest documentation is a report from the year 1111 which states that monks from Rottenbuch brought “...the art to carve all sorts of small household items from Oberammergau..” into the Berchtesgaden area. The carving of religious motives most likely originates in the pilgrimage to Ettal. A travel report dating from 1520, given by a traveler from Florence, highly praised the detail and skill of the wood carvings of Oberammergau.

In 1563 the abbot of Ettal even bestowed upon the Ammergau woodcarvers their own set of trade rules and regulations. In those days of 18^th century it was customary to sell the artifacts primarily with on-site several distributors in Europe-wide branches sprang up in Oberammergau. From these branch offices (‘Kraxenträger’) the wandering salesman used to sell these carvings carrying a unique backpack.  Today there are approximately sixty active wood carvers live in Oberammergau.

Wood used as raw material:

Basswood is mostly used by the beginners as it is one of the easiest wood types to carve. Oak is one of the strongest wood types and is regarded for its durability and is ideal for furniture. Other wood types are – Black Walnut, White Pine, Balsa, Butternut etc. 

·    Wall Frescoes: Oberammergau is also famous for its murals and frescoes on the residential building walls particularly at the time of the event of ‘The Passion Play’. This is another traditional art of this town. This famous art form is called ‘Lűftlmalerei’ or frescoes of Bavarian themes, fairy tales, and religious scenes or architecture found on many homes and buildings. Lűftlmalerei is common in Upper Bavaria and its name is derived from an Oberammergau house called ‘Zum Lüfti’, which was the home of façade painter Franz Seraph Zwinck (1748-1792). The necessity to work quickly in the fresh air (Luft), led to the belief that the term 'Lüftlmalerei' is somehow connected to this particular method of painting.

      ‘Lűftlmalerei’  or frescoes of Bavarian themes in Oberammergau

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‘Lűftlmalerei’ or frescoes of Bavarian themes in Oberammergau

This handicraft method of wall-painting originally applied for decorating the baroque facades in Italy and Southern Germany. It was only in the 18th century that this method began to become popular in the foothill region of the Alps, where wealthy traders, peasants and craftsmen displayed their wealth by means of opulently painted facades. The subjects of the paintings are mostly of a religious character, particularly involving figures of saints as well as manifold scenes all around the ‘Passion Play’ theme in Oberammergau.

The town itself is like an outdoor museum with buildings as the canvas and paint as the medium. Nearly every shop, home, lodge, and public building in Oberammergau is covered with some sort of religious or fairy-tale themed painting. It can be recognized as a form of Alpine tradition. Presently, the trend over here is taken up at a new level. The visitors notice that each painting is meticulously maintained.

·   The ‘Passion Play’: The most significant event that has made Oberammergau world famous is the ‘Passion Play’ performed as a vow. This is emphatically related with a pandemic situation that had happened long before. Christians worldwide might already be familiar with Oberammergau, although for an incredibly different reason.  The ‘Passion Play’ claims the maximum tourist attraction for every decade continuously since the last 380 years.

The Play shares the story of Christ and his crucifixion.  The Play is theatrically speaking, an incredible achievement. Only people from Oberammergau are allowed to act on its stage. Amazingly, the play was first performed in the mid-seventeenth century and is still going strong.

Looking Back:

It was 1633. The bubonic plague was still raging in Bavaria. But legend has it that after the pledge (the ‘Passion Play’), no one else in Oberammergau, died from it.

Father Gröner of Oberammergau Church showing the Book of Death from the 17th-century Plague

The genesis of the Oberammergau Passion Play was the pandemic in 1633.  Bubonic plague then ravaged Bavaria, including the Oberammergau—it is believed that one quarter of its population had died.  The survivors, according to legend, then stood before a cross and promised God that if He would spare their lives, they and their descendants would perform a Passion Play there every decade. Thereafter, not one more person in the village died of the plague.   The grateful survivors, believing that God had answered their prayer, began the next year to perform the ‘Passion Play’ - enacting Jesus’ life, death and resurrection — every 10th year forever after.

Breaking the tradition for the first time:

For nearly four centuries, the people of Oberammergau more or less kept their promise celebrating their salvation from one pandemic — until another pandemic in 2020, forced them to break it.

This year’s Passion Play, scheduled to premiere in May and run through the summer, had to be abandoned because of the coronavirus. An epic production, cast with local residents as actors, the play would have brought half a million visitors to the town and 2,500 people, or half of Oberammergau, onto the world’s biggest open-air stage.

The production would have been the 42^nd since the play’s premiere in 1634. Cancelled only twice — in 1770 during the enlightenment and in 1940 during World War II — the play has been performed once every decade and sometimes twice, for special anniversaries. It had to be postponed once before — after too many men had died in World War I to field a cast. Oberammergau prayed for another miracle before the approach of Easter in this year.

So far, the village does not have a single known case of Covid-19. But outside Oberammergau the number of cases has been rising, and most fear it is just a matter of time. On Palm Sunday, there were more than 91,000 infections in Germany and more than 1,300 deaths.

The people in the town had been building up to this moment for a decade. For months, hotels and restaurants had staffed up to cope with the onslaught of visitors. Local craftsmen worked overtime to sculpt the stage props. Volunteers helped sew costumes. Rehearsals brought together all age groups in the town from toddlers to grandparents, sometimes daily.

For centuries, kings and queens, leaders and celebrities, have flocked to this small town in the Bavarian Alps to be immersed in the story of salvation. And, in keeping with an ancient village statute, many men had stopped shaving a year ago to allow hair to sprout freely, A.D.'30 style.

But now the rehearsals have stopped. The Passion Play theatre, with its 4,500 seats, stands empty. Props and costumes are going into storage. Only the beards remain as village hairdressers are shut because of the coronavirus. It has been more than two weeks since the postponement was announced, and a collective sense of gloom has given way to an anxious calm. Like elsewhere in Germany, Oberammergau is adapting to the new reality of life under a pandemic — but perhaps more than elsewhere, villagers are looking at their fate through the prism of their local history.

An hour’s drive from Oberammergau, deep in the woods, there is a chapel dedicated to a little known saint who is only now being rediscovered — Saint Corona, patron saint of resisting epidemics as Father Gröner said. There are hard times ahead, he said. But everything has two sides. Perhaps something good will come of this crisis, he said - the return of solidarity and compassion for each other and the planet.

Scenes of the Play and the Open –air Theatre; 2022 Oberammergau 
www.passionsspiele-oberammergau.de

Revival of an old faith anew:

As Father Gröner spoke about a little known newly discovered faith on St. Corona I started to enquire about this. What I discovered is very interesting. Today we are frightened with the word Corona as a deadly virus. But this lady named Corona has been revived in West Germany to frighten Corona (the virus) who protects human beings from its harm. Some theological experts also expressed doubts on the saint’s historical link to infectious diseases. But the story of her strong faith and belief culminating into a gruesome death has honoured her as a religious martyr and gave her the sanctity that has glorified her as St Corona.

St. Corona

Verdict of death to St. Corona by the Romans

St. Corona, is said to have been born either in 161 or 287 A.D., was a girl of sixteen years only but with a strong faith in God and Christianity and having a brave heart to fight back against the misdeeds, torture, oppression and unscrupulous activities of the ruler. She was killed tied between two palm trees bent to the ground that were released to tear her apart.  

The coronavirus pandemic that has already killed hundreds of thousands of people worldwide is the reason that all of a sudden, people are aware of a Christian martyr believed to have been tortured to death by the Romans about 1,800 years ago. Her name: Corona — which means ‘crown’ in Latin.

Aachen Cathedral, a world heritage site in western Germany, has just put on display in its treasure vault an elaborate reliquary believed to contain some of St. Corona's bones. This mighty 9th-century cathedral is the burial place of Charlemagne, the first holy roman emperor, who died in 814 A.D.; it is also where many German kings and queens were crowned. It remains a prominent pilgrimage church to this day. King Otto III brought Corona's relics to Aachen in 997. They were initially kept in a tomb underneath a slab on the cathedral floor for hundreds of years before they were moved to the shrine in the early 20th century. 

For hundreds of years, the Corona relics were stored underneath this massive marble slab

People in the small Austrian town of St. Corona used to pray to the saint in difficult times, including to protect their livestock from contagious diseases. As interpreted by Daniela Lövenich, a spokeswoman, that it was very much a local phenomenon — one that has recently caught the attention of the media, as St. Corona, "patron saint of infectious diseases," is indeed a striking title for the times. St. Corona is commonly thought to be the patron saint of butchers and treasure-hunters, prayed to in times of financial hardship. In the current pandemic, St. Corona may not be the go-to saint to ward off disease, but who knows, the faithful may just turn to her regarding money matters, as millions are also left jobless by the crisis.  

Time to bid farewell with HIGH HOPES: I ended up my journey happily in 2017. But in 2020 the situation turned different with another epidemic falling out which ironically broke the continuity of the vow that started with a pandemic few centuries ago. The old vow breaks perhaps to take a new vow on growing more humanity, faith and love between all human races on earth.

 References:

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Passion Play Archive 1905. (1905). Retrieved from web.archive.org : http://www.oberammergau.org/

*Retired Associate Professor, Women's Christian College