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

About the book

Countess Madeleine von Wildenau comes to the village of Oberammergau dissatisfied with the emotional poverty of her privileged life. The Passion Play offers an experience of faith that seems more immediate than the conventions she has known, and Freyer, the man portraying Christ, becomes the focus of her intense response. Yet the village itself is no simple refuge from worldly judgment: the exclusion of a young mother from the play reveals a painful distance between compassion and communal rules. Hillern connects the countess's attraction to questions of spiritual idealization, class, and sacrifice. The distinction between the actor and the sacred role grows difficult for Madeleine to maintain. Her longing for redemption must encounter the claims and limitations of an actual human relationship.

• Faith and idealization
• Love and sacrifice
• Compassion and social judgment

Why read it

The Passion Play shapes the romance's central difficulty: Madeleine must confront the difference between a sacred image and the person embodying it.

Mary J. Safford's English translation, Drexel Biddle, 1902