(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 valley of those Alps, a town of ornate chalets inhabited chiefly by woodcarvers who combine medieval craftsmanship with modern salesmanship, who ship their whittlings all over the world. Over the town looms the jagged Kofel peak; in the town a bearded newsboy, attired in plus fours, sells his papers from a motorcycle. It is a town of anachronisms but the Passion Play is still its overtone.
Last week Oberammergau was ready to present the Passion Play again, beginning May 11, with 32 regular and 34 supplemental performances planned to accommodate some 300,000 visitors throughout the summer. Most of the small boys were groomed for supernumeraries, had let their hair grow until it tumbled about their shoulders. Almost every house was swept and scoured, its spare rooms prepared for visitors. 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.
The auditorium, with a semicircular windowed roof and a huge open-air stage, has been enlarged to receive an audience more than twice as great as Oberammergau's total population of 2,500 souls. Of that number, some 700 are participating in the Play. As the opening performance neared, there was great tension, for this year, for the first time since 1900, a new man was to play the leading role.
The 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.
The 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, simple wife, who might easily be mistaken for his mother. Some villagers will tell you that the hair of Alois Lang owes its luxuriant curliness to a permanent wave.