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 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.

Between Anton and Alois Lang is no great friendship, nor any notable rivalry. Long ago Anton signified his willingness to resign the role. There was the matter of his age, and resignation did not mean the loss of money. The Passion Players receive negligible salaries -- one-fourth of the profits, another fourth for expenses, another for furnishing the pensions, an other for communal purposes. Said Catholic America last week: "A dentist's bill which Mr. Lang contracted after the Passion Play was eight times as large as the sum he received for . . . 68 performances." Possibly, however, Anton Lang resents the fact that his daughter was not chosen for the leading female role.

The Virgin. Anni Rutz, awkward, homely, sweet-tempered daughter of a widowed candy shop proprietress, will play the Virgin this year. Anni is a typist in a saw mill, the first blonde to play Mary in the living memory of Oberammergau. No trouble has she had in fulfilling the obligation of the chosen Virgin to lead a seemly life. For a while it seemed that her younger, much prettier and lazier sister might receive the vote, but the Oberammergau electors are discerning men, not to be influenced by appearances.

The Mary Magdalene. They did not choose Hansi Preisinger for the Virgin, for instance, because she is engaged to an engineer in Munich. Those who hurriedly enter her father's Hotel Alte Post after dark are apt to find Hansi embracing her young man in the shadowy taproom, and such actions would be frowned upon on the part of the chosen Virgin. But Hansi is a fresh, strapping brunette, popular, capable, so she was elected to play Mary Magdalene. Her mother and father, the latter somewhat weakened by a convivial life, display satisfaction in their daughter's success; Hansi cheerily conceals her regret that she cannot appear as Mary.

The Judas. Guido Mayr, hale, clever woodcarver, is to be villain for the second time. But Johann Zwink, who played the role several times, will continue to be missed whether Mayr is good or bad. For Zwink, a mellow, watery-eyed, lovable ancient, now exceedingly poor, is considered by many in the village to have been the best character actor that Oberammergau ever had. His was naturally a Judas face. Because his spirit was quite otherwise, he used to rehearse his part by walking about town, mumbling imprecations in his beard against the Christ until he almost believed them, became suicidally inclined. It has long been Johann Zwink's great desire that his son might succeed him. But the son is given to carousals and balladry unbecoming a Passion Player.

The Director is Johann Georg Lang, 40, a teacher of woodcarving who is unrelated to either Alois or Anton Lang. A lively man of theories, he has eliminated much of the archaic flavor of the production; has, for example, substituted for the usual motley of costumes a color scheme of white, gold and grey.

These and the other characters are likely to be observed playing cards during the evenings at the Hotel Alte Post. Fanni, a large waitress with an enormous goitre, circulates briskly with bubbling seidels. One may also see the town's chief radio dealer, who wears a swooping beard and a medieval smock which smothers his ankles. or a clean-shaven, spruce young fellow in a well-tailored sack suit who sells Biblical images and avidly studies history. In one corner is likely to be another modern, slightly sour-looking youth--Oberammergau's intellectual, who reads Freud, Jung and Adler and despises the Passion Play. Those who have an introduction may be able to chat over the steins with Alois Lang himself. He talks of his War experiences. But he does not dwell on their grisly side, on his own hand-grenade wounds. Instead, he says: "Every mortally wounded soldier I ever saw who had time to think before he died called on God."

* Painted at Oberammergau for TIME by Artist Adolf Dehn of Berlin.

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