Word: jesus
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...hang one of a series of Biblical paintings which had appeared, with text by Manhattan Adman Bruce Barton (Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn), in Good Housekeeping magazine. But those who had objected so noisily to this indignity paid little attention to the bright decorative scene, in which the feet of Jesus were being washed by the tears of a sinner, once it was on view...
...front cover*) In the Bavarian village of Oberammergau, the social register is the Holy Bible. Rising young men aspire to be Peter or John or Joseph, the more self-confident of them have even thought of being Jesus himself-in the hallowed Passion Play, which has been presented in Oberammergau since 1634. In 1633 the inhabitants promised God that thereafter, once every ten years, they would dramatize the last earthly days of Christ, if only Heaven would check the Black Plague whose dark miasma had penetrated even into the Bavarian Alps...
...Everyone who attends the Passion Play (admission $5) has to pay $11 or $12 for two nights' lodging whether he remains or not. During the Play season practically every Oberammergau home is also a pension. Important or lucky visitors are billeted at the house of the Virgin or Jesus or one of the Apostles...
...Jesus. Anton Lang, a potter, played the part in 1900, 1910, 1922. Now 55, he was considered too old to play it again by the 21 electors chosen by all Oberammergau to determine the cast. Says he: "You do not know what a great physical strain it is to hang on the cross for a half-hour." Instead of risking heart failure in this fashion, Anton Lang will read the prologs to the 18 acts and 25 tableaux, a duty customarily undertaken by those who have played the Christ...
...beloved veteran will be succeeded by Alois Lang, a woodcarver, of whom he is a distant relative. There are some 200 Langs in Oberammergau. Alois is tall, robust, 38. In 1922 he lost the election to play Jesus by only a few votes, thereafter understudied Anton Lang. He is elegantly mannered, confident, magnetic. He keeps 40 hives of bees, likes to smoke and drink beer with the Apostles at the Hotel Alte Post. He carves innumerable wooden Christs, and exhibits no false modesty about his exalted position in the Passion Play. No one is happier in Oberammergau than his stout...