On the Cross: A Romance of the Passion Play at Oberammergau

burgomaster, casting a stern glance at the girls and women. "The men are fully aware of the meaning and importance of our cause. It is bad enough that so many are not understood and supported by their wives! You--the women of Ammergau--alas that I must say it--you have done the place and the cause more harm by your gossip than you can answer for to the God who honors us with His holy mission. There is chattering and tattling where you think you can do so unpunished, and many things are whispered into the ears of the visitors which afterwards goes as false rumors through the world! You care nothing for the great cause, if you get an opportunity to gratify some bit of petty malice. Now you are weeping, are you not? Because we are ruined--the performances must cease! But are you sure that Joseph Freyer would have been capable of treating us in this way, had it not been for the flood of gossip you poured out on him and his cousin, Josepha? It embittered his mind against us and drove him into the stranger's arms. Has he not said a hundred times that, if it were not for personating the Christ, he would have left Ammergau long ago? Where _one_ bond is destroyed another tears all the more easily. Take it as a lesson--and keep silence _this_ time at least, if you can govern your feminine weakness so far! I shall make your husbands accountable for every word which escapes concerning this matter." Several of the women murmured and cast spiteful glances at the burgomaster. "To _whom_ does this refer, _who_ is said to have tattled?" asked a stout woman with a bold face. The burgomaster frowned. "It refers to those who feel guilty--and does not concern those who do not!" he cried, sternly. "The good silent women among you know very well that I do not mean them--and the others can take heed." A painful pause followed. The burgomaster's eyes rested threateningly upon the angry faces of the culprits. Those who felt that they were innocent gazed at him undisturbed. "I will answer for my wife"--"Nothing shall go from my house!" protested one after another, and thus at least every effort would be made to save the honor of Ammergau, and conceal their disgrace from the world. But now came the question how to save the Play. A warm debate followed. The people, thus robbed of their hopes, wished to continue the performances at any cost, with any cast of characters. But here they encountered the resolute opposition of the burgomaster: "Either well--or not at all!" was his ultimatum. "We cannot deceive ourselves for a moment. At present, there is not one of us who can personate the Christ--except Thomas Rendner, and where, in that case, could we find a Pilate--who could replace Thomas Rendner?" There was a violent discussion. "The sacristan, Nathanael, could play Pilate." "Who then would take Nathanael?" "Ah, if this one and that one were still in the village! But they had gone away to seek their bread, like so many who could no longer earn a support since the Partenkirch School of Carving had competed with the one in Ammergau. And many more would follow. If things went on in the same fashion, and matters were not improved by the play, in ten years more there might be none to fill the parts, necessity would gradually drive every one away." "Yes, we are in a sore strait, my friends. The company melts away more and more--the danger to the Passion Play constantly increases. If we can find no help now, penury will deprive us of some of our best performers ere the next time. And yet, my friends, believe me--I say it with a heavy heart: if we now continue with a poor cast of characters--we shall be lost wholly and forever, for then we shall have destroyed the reputation of the Passion Play." "Thomas Rendner will personate the Christ well--there is no danger on that score." "And if he does--if Rendner takes the Christ, the sacristan Pilate, and some one else Nathanael--shall we not be obliged to study the whole piece again, and can that be done so rapidly? Can we commence our rehearsals afresh now? I ask you, is it possible?" The people hung their heads in hopeless discouragement. "Our sole resource would be to find a Christ among those who are not in the Play--and all who have talent are already employed. The others cannot be used, if we desire to present an artistic whole." Despair seized upon the listeners--there was not a single one among them who had not invested his little all in furniture and beds for the strangers, and even incurred debts for the purpose, to say nothing of the universal poverty. New proposals were made, all of which the hapless burgomaster was compelled to reject. "The general welfare is at a stake, and the burgomaster thinks only of the _artistic whole_." With these words the wrath of the assembly was finally all directed against him, and those who fanned it were mainly the strangers attracted by the Passion Play for purposes of speculation, who cared nothing how much it suffered in future, if only they made their money! "I know the elements which are stirring up strife here," said the burgomaster, scanning the assembly with his stern eyes. "But they shall not succeed in separating us old citizens of Ammergau, who have held together through every calamity! Friends, let the spirit which our forefathers have preserved for centuries save us from discord--let us not deny the good old Ammergau nature in misfortune." "And with the good old nature you can starve," muttered the speculators. "If the burgomaster does not consider your interests of more importance than the fame of his success as stage manager he ought to go to Munich and get the position--there he could give as many model performances as he desired!" "Yes," cried another, "he is sacrificing our interests to his own vanity." During this accusation the burgomaster remained standing with his figure drawn up to its full height. Only the dark swollen vein on his weary brow betrayed the indignation seething in his soul. "I disdain to make any reply to such a charge. I know the hearts of my fellow citizens too well to fear that any one of them believes it." "No, certainly not!" exclaimed the wiser ones. But the majority were silent in their wrathful despair. "I know that many of you misjudge me, and I bear you no resentment for it. I admit that in such a period of storm and stress it is difficult to maintain an unprejudiced judgment. "I know also that I myself have often bewildered your judgment, for it is impossible to create such a work without giving offense here and there. I know that many who feel wounded and slighted secretly resent it, and I do not blame them! Only I beg you to visit the rancor on me _personally_--not extend it to the cause and injure that out of opposition to me. In important moments like these, I beg you to let all private grudges drop and gather around me--in this one decisive hour think only of the whole community, and not of all the wrongs the burgomaster may have done you individually. "If I had only the interest of Ammergau to guard, all would be well! But I have not only _your_ welfare to protect, but the dignity of a cause for which I am responsible to _God_--so long as it remains in my hands. Human nature is weak and subject to external impressions. The religious conceptions of thousands depend upon the greater or less powerful illusion produced by the Passion Play as a moral symbol. This is a heavy responsibility in a time when negation and materialism are constantly undermining faith and dragging everything sacred in the dust. In such a period, the utmost perfection of detail is necessary, that the _form_ at least may command respect, where the _essence_ is despised. I will try to make this dear to you by an example. The cynic who sneers at our worship of Mary and, with satirical satisfaction, paints the Virgin as the corpulent mother of four or five boys, will laugh at an Altoetting Virgin but grow silent and earnest before a Sistine Madonna! For here the divinity in which he does not wish to believe confronts him in the work of art and compels his reverence. It is precisely in a period of materialism like the present that religious representation has its most grateful task--for the deeper man sinks into sensualism, the more accessible he is to sensual impressions, and the more easily religion can influence him through visible forms, repelling or attracting according to the defective or artistic treatment of the material. The religious-sensuous impetus is the only one which can influence times like these, that is why the Passion Play is more important now than ever! "God has bestowed upon me the modest talent of organization and a little artistic culture, that I may watch over it, and see that those who come to us trustfully to seek their God, do not go away with a secret disappointment--and that those who come to _laugh_ may be quiet--and ashamed. "This is the great task allotted to me, which I have hitherto executed without regard for personal irritability, and the injury of petty individual interests, and hope to accomplish even under stress of the most dire necessity. "If you wish to oppose it, you should have given the office I occupy to some one who thinks the task less lofty, and who is complaisant enough to sacrifice the noble to the petty. But see where you will end with the complaisant man, who listens to every one. See how soon anarchy will enter among you, for where individual guidance is lacking, and every one can assert his will, the seed of discord shoots up, overgrowing everything. Now you are all against _me_, but then you will be against _one another_, and while you are quarreling and disputing, time will pass unused, and at last the first antiquated model will be seized because it can be most easily and quickly executed. But the modern world will turn away with a derisive laugh, saying: 'We can't look at these peasant farces any more.' "Then answer for robbing thousands of a beautiful illusion and letting them return home poorer in faith and reverence than they came--answer for it to God, whose sublime task you have degraded by an inferior performance, and lastly to yourselves for forgetting the future in the present gain, and to profit by the Passion Play a few more times now, ruin it for future decades. You do not believe it because, in this secluded village, you cannot know what the taste of our times demands. But I do, for I have lived in the outside world, and I tell you that whoever sees these incomplete performances will certainly not return, and will make us a reputation stamping us as bunglers forever!" The burgomaster pressed his hand to his head; a keen pang was piercing his brain--and his heart also. "I have nothing more to add," he concluded, faintly. "But if you know any one whom you believe could care for Ammergau better than I--I am ready at any moment to place my office in his hands." Then, with one accord, every heart swelled with the old lofty feeling for the sacred cause of their ancestors and grateful appreciation of the man who had again roused it in them. No, he did not deserve that they should doubt him--he had again taught them to think like true natives of Ammergau, aye, they felt proudly that he was of the true stock--it was Ammergau blood that flowed in his veins and streamed from the wounds which had been inflicted on his heart that day! They saw that they had wronged him and they gathered with their old love and loyalty around the sorely-beset man, ready to atone with their lives, for these hot-blooded, easily influenced artist-natures were nevertheless true to the core. The malcontents were forced to keep silence, no one listened to