The Passions at Oberammergau

This year in Oberammergau, Upper Bavaria, the famous Passion Play is being performed for the 36th time since 1634. Thus the villagers are slightly ahead of the vow made in 1633 to perform it once every ten years from then on. Unfortunately, the 1970 Passion Play season has been perturbed by frequent charges that the play is antisemitic, charges which have made themselves felt in the cancellation of numerous block bookings from America. Protests by the American Jewish Congress and by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith caused Lufthansa to stop advertising special Passion Play tours. Nevertheless, the play is sold out: There were 1,500,000 applications for a total of 520,000 available places, and at the present time only a few returned tickets remain available for this season’s performances, which— things being what they are—may well be the last performance of the Passion Play in its traditional form.

In a sense the protest seems to be part of a widespread American and British tendency to think the worst possible things about West Germany, which remains the strongest European element in the North Atlantic alliance. They also bear some resemblance on the German scene, Oberammergau being in Catholic and conservative Bavaria, to the popular American pastime of lampooning the Bible Belt and its unsophisticated, but just possibly genuine, piety. It is hard to know what to make of them as applied to the Passion Play. They are not confined to Jewish sources, which cannot be blamed for exhibiting a certain sensitivity toward what Germans—any Germans —say about Jews. Liberal Catholics, taking their cue from Vatican II and from Reinhold Niebuhr’s invective against evangelizing the Jews for Christ, have also contributed their piece. Is the Passion Play antisemitic, and is that the important question to ask about it today?

HB

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Harold O. J. Brown

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This year in Oberammergau, Upper Bavaria, the famous Passion Play is being performed for the 36th time since 1634. Thus the villagers are slightly ahead of the vow made in 1633 to perform it once every ten years from then on. Unfortunately, the 1970 Passion Play season has been perturbed by frequent charges that the play is antisemitic, charges which have made themselves felt in the cancellation of numerous block bookings from America. Protests by the American Jewish Congress and by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith caused Lufthansa to stop advertising special Passion Play tours. Nevertheless, the play is sold out: There were 1,500,000 applications for a total of 520,000 available places, and at the present time only a few returned tickets remain available for this season’s performances, which— things being what they are—may well be the last performance of the Passion Play in its traditional form.

In a sense the protest seems to be part of a widespread American and British tendency to think the worst possible things about West Germany, which remains the strongest European element in the North Atlantic alliance. They also bear some resemblance on the German scene, Oberammergau being in Catholic and conservative Bavaria, to the popular American pastime of lampooning the Bible Belt and its unsophisticated, but just possibly genuine, piety. It is hard to know what to make of them as applied to the Passion Play. They are not confined to Jewish sources, which cannot be blamed for exhibiting a certain sensitivity toward what Germans—any Germans —say about Jews. Liberal Catholics, taking their cue from Vatican II and from Reinhold Niebuhr’s invective against evangelizing the Jews for Christ, have also contributed their piece. Is the Passion Play antisemitic, and is that the important question to ask about it today?