Oberammergau: A Minor American Myth

Abstract

Ever since the first productions of the Oberammergau Passion Play during the seventeenth century there have been spectators from the neighboring towns and villages.^ Nevertheless, it was only after 1840, and especially after 1850 that people from all over Germany became interested in the performance of the Play which still holds the record for the longest run in dramatic history. In 1850 the famous actor and stage manager at the Dresden Hoftheater, Eduard Philip Devnent, came to Oberammergau, saw the Play and wrote down his observations which started an extensive critical discussion and ultimately secured world wide fame for the small vUlage of peasants and wood-carvers.Î t did not take long before people from English-speaking countries began to attend the Passion Play and record their impressions. There are at least three English authors who are largely responsible for the interest Americans took in the Oberammergau performances. They are Anna Mary Howitt, the Baroness Tautphoeus, and Arthur Penrhyn Stanley. Their critical attitude needs to be taken into account as it was their books and articles which influenced Protestant Americans and led them to give the play performed by Catholics in a predominantly Catholic country a positive and enthusiastic reception.When in May 1850 Anna Mary Howitt went to Munich in order to continue her studies in the fine arts, the editor Henry Chorley asked her to write a description of the Passion Play for the The Ladies Companion.^ Although Miss Howitt does not seem to be revolted by the appearance of Christ himself and other biblical figures on stage, she ultimately finds fault with the altogether too realistic representation of the Passion. Her criticism of the " primitive piety" of the people of Oberammergau is certainly the outcome of her Protestant upbringing, but it is also, to a certain extent, a result of the widespread English anti-Catholicism which reached its peak in the middle of the century as a reaction to the papal decision to restore a regular Catholic hierarchy in England.'* Mr. Nixon, a character in Baroness Tautphoeus' novel Quits (1857) similarly expresses his disapproval of the paraphernalia of Bavarian