Word: oberammergau
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...Passion zahlt's" (The Passion will pay for it), people like to say in Oberammergau. And, indeed, the famous Oberammergau Passion Play, first performed in the picture-postcard Bavarian hamlet back in 1634, has kept the local economy humming for much of the 20th century. It is a six-hour production, put on for a four-month run every ten years with a cast of 800. A quarter of the town (pop. 4,800) takes part, working as stagehands, orchestra members, singing away in the huge chorus, or milling about as Roman soldiers or members of Jewish crowds. Many...
...this year's show, Oberammergau reformers thought they could solve the problem by replacing the Daisenberger play with an older and less passionate Passion text written by Father Ferdinand Rosner of the nearby Ettal Monastery and first performed in 1750. Rosner's allegory-laden verses blame the whole tragedy on the Devil. The "Rosnerites" raised cash for a 1977 trial production. Critics loved the show, but the villagers missed their old familiar lines, scenes and songs from the Daisenberger version. In the 1978 election of the village council, the "Daisenbergers" won and promptly scheduled the usual Passion text...
...decision at Oberammergau...
Despite the Nazi Holocaust, the Oberammergau Passion Play, Bavaria's decennial Catholic folk pageant, has gone on using an 1860 text that portrays Jews as Shylocks and Christ killers. Since the Second Vatican Council's denunciation of antiSemitism, however, a group of townspeople led by Head Woodcarver Hans Schwaighofer has been agitating to dump the lurid script. Last year Schwaighofer's group staged a trial run of a 1750 version that makes Satan the heavy and, like the New Testament, portrays the Jews as divided over Jesus. In February the town council voted to use that version...
...villains were wildly villainous. Thus it not only blames the Jews for Jesus' death but turns them into a snarling mob. Even after World War II, the church approved the continuation of the pageants, but since the Second Vatican Council's condemnation of antiSemitism, the caricatures at Oberammergau have become something of an official embarrassment...