Religion: In Oberammergau

(See 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.

Oberammergau lies in a...

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