The words of the narrator, which you can find in the box below, conclude the "Play of the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ", which premiered in 1997 in Tirschenreuth in the Upper Palatinate and has since established itself as one of the youngest Passion Play venues in Bavaria. In autumn 2022, a new production will be staged that sheds light on the historical events from a contemporary perspective, particularly with regard to the figure of Judas and the traditional role of the women surrounding Jesus. The scenic visualisation of the biblical accounts leads to this prayer of praise, thanksgiving and supplication, which includes the play and audience community with the pronouns "we" and "us". The final verses, which you can read in the second box, build a bridge to the prologue, where the Christian message of salvation and deliverance is proclaimed in the traditional tone of popular piety. Once again, the speaker's statements are given an audience-related meaning (see box on the right).
Even these framing elements - the prologue as the believers' confession of the suffering Christ and the epilogue as thanksgiving for Jesus' act of redemption on the cross of Golgotha - hint at the religious seriousness that underpins the performance in Tirschenreuth. The play by renowned theatre director Johannes Reitmeier sees itself as a "quiet" passion that does not want to compete with the great performances in Oberammergau, Erl or Thiersee. Far removed from any monumentality, the chamber play-like "Bilderbogen" (J. Reitmeier) aims to quietly and unspectacularly show characteristic moments of the Passion story.
The passion play has been described as a "fifth gospel" (Ludwig Mödl), which attempts to interpret the message of the mystery of the cross for the respective present and make it vividly tangible and comprehensible. Each "Passion" has - regardless of the common concern to preserve, strengthen and pass on human and Christian values - its own style, its own way of penetrating the biblical material, its own aesthetics. The Tirschenreuth Passion is a very special example of this: with its spoken dialect and unique narrative structure, it was and is also influential on a European scale. The soul of the piece is the native dialect of the four evangelists, who act as narrators of "their" gospel, which lends the Passion story a very down-to-earth atmosphere. It is precisely at such moments that the play brings the biblical accounts into the present and turns a historical event into a contemporary one that appeals to the audience on an emotional-affective level (see box on p. 156).
I.
In many parts of Bavaria, new Passion Play theatres were formed in the 20th century. Of course, these were only short-lived endeavours, but in some places strong communities emerged that have dedicated themselves to the great task of the Passion Play with seriousness and joy right up to the present day. They bear witness to the Bavarian population's proverbial joy of acting, which has always found new nourishment in the telling, or perhaps even the proclamation, of the Passion story of the "Man from Nazareth".
In any case, Bavaria today once again presents itself as a lively passion play landscape, after the spiritual drama had experienced its first bloom under the sign of baroque piety. As is well known, this form of play was suppressed by the Enlightenment, the condemnation of the pictorial and sensual staging of faith, which was opposed by the demand for rational piety, and the corresponding prohibitions of the ecclesiastical and secular authorities. Almost everywhere during this period, popular passion plays fell victim to the new sobriety.
This tradition flourished, usually only briefly, in several Bavarian regions in the 1810s and 1820s. In the old Bavarian and Swabian regions, Oberammergau usually acted - directly or indirectly - as an inspiring model. For example, in Thaining, south of Landsberg am Lech, in the Rott am Inn monastery or in Mittenwald, "The Great Sacrifice of Atonement on Golgotha" was shown, drawing on the text by Fr Othmar Weis.
In most cases, however, the permanent resumption of the Passion Play failed, not least due to the reservations of ecclesiastical and secular authorities, although, like other forms of expression of popular piety, they were permitted again in principle with the accession of King Ludwig I (1825). As early as 1823, the Ordinariate in Munich had opposed the renewed performances, followed in 1834 by a ban from the General Commissariat of the Isar District, today's government of Upper Bavaria. The Passion Play was also revived in some places in the Swabian region. Usually only for a short time, such as in Krumbach, where Passion Plays were performed from June to September in 1816 and 1817, in which 150 people took part, and in Illertissen, where a small Passion Play was staged in the castle courtyard's Schafstadel in 1821.
Sometimes, however, a new performance tradition was established that has continued to the present day, as in the small village of Waal near Buchloe. Here, too, people turned their attention to Oberammergau and refrained from re-performing their own older text, a five-part Passion entitled "Traurspihl, Beteuttet die übergrosse Liebe Gottes gegen das menschliche Geschlecht. Presented through the life, life and death of Jesus Christ. Von einer Löblichen Bürgerschaft", which has been preserved in a copy from 1792. In 1815, the Passion was performed according to a specially created model by P. Othmar Weis, a revision of his Oberammergau text from 1811. The operatic performance took place in the open air; 160 amateur actors were involved.
The explicit reference to the famous passion play venue was evidenced by the heavy borrowing of costumes from there. The textual orientation towards Oberammergau persisted for a long time. Even the 20th century adaptors, the Munich writer Benno Rödel (1894, 1904 and 1914) and the Waal pastor Sebastian Wieser (1921, 1928, 1938 and 1949), essentially referred back to the older original by Othmar Weis and the revised version (1860) by Joseph Alois Daisenberger. It was not until 1969 and 1970 that a newly written "Passion" by the Swabian "peasant poet" Alois Sailer was shown, which the patrons wanted to be a "play for worship" that "reverently adhered to the biblical accounts" and was intended to help the players "proclaim the suffering, death and resurrection of the Lord to the people of our day in powerful but unpathetic language".
As the desired success failed to materialise, the tried and tested - edifying - text from the early 19th century was returned to. The next few years were characterised by a discussion about continuity and renewal: Efforts to modernise were opposed by strong forces of inertia. In 1975, the well-known Swabian dialect poet Arthur Maximilian Miller was commissioned by the then director Otto Kobel to write a down-to-earth Passion Play based on the original text from 1792, but this was strictly rejected by the players' assembly because it contained dialect passages.
It was not until 1992 that this text, with its successful literary combination of standard language and dialect, was brought to the stage; this Swabian Passion was also performed again in 2001, 2009 and 2015. In the modern Passion Play theatre, a spectacle reminiscent of the Baroque play concept unfolds, to which the linguistic differentiation lends additional liveliness: Jesus speaks in the prose of the Bible; the scribes, Pilate and Herod in Baroque style in High German verse; and the people speak in their own dialect. The atmospheric stage design, which works partly with a fixed backdrop and partly with projections and lighting effects, intensifies the effect.
While it was and still is mostly the task of the local amateur theatre to take up the tradition, renew the old texts and perform them again, in the 20th century, especially in the 1920s, a different development could be observed to some extent. In an attempt to revive the type of medieval mystery play as faithfully as possible to the Bible, the Munich theatre man Hermann Dimmler and actors from the National Theatre staged open-air Passion Plays in Herzogpark in Bogenhausen in the summer of 1920. He had written a textbook "based on the wording of the four gospels" (printed around 1920/21). The unique natural backdrop seemed to him to be the ideal location for his production, while he rejected the confines of a conventional theatre with its "illusory world of wood and cardboard and painted canvas".
This play obviously had an intense and lasting effect. In 1921, the Festspielgesellschaft für das katholische Deutschland was founded under the direction of Alfred Lommatzsch, a well-known director at the Volksbühne, which toured the Dimmler Passion throughout southern Germany. The theatre relied on the participation of local amateur actors. The Munich Passion was performed in this form in Waldmünchen at Whitsun 1924, for example; during the National Socialist era, from 4 to 6 April 1936, a new production was staged there, which was announced by the local press as a "solemn experience for all fellow citizens".
This choice of words alone gives an idea of the reason for the lack of a ban on the expression of Christian religion and belief, although this was actually to be expected. The anti-Semitic features of the play's text certainly offered links to National Socialist ideology, which is why the new rulers allowed the initiators of the religious spectacle to go ahead. A review in the Waldmünchener Grenzbote reveals how the performance could - and probably should - be understood: It referred to the integrative power of the play, which was intended to form, maintain and strengthen a community (of faith and values), while at the same time marginalising Jewish fellow citizens.
It is therefore not surprising that it was even performed during the war, for example in Cham in 1940. In the immediate post-war period, in 1947/48, this Passion play was still one of the most frequently performed plays in Bavaria, and its impact remained unbroken for a long time, as shown by productions in 1951 in Hofheim in Lower Franconia and in 1966 in the parish church of St Johann Baptist in Pfaffenhofen.
II.
In some places in the 20th century, the idea of creating a counterpoint of religious renewal to the upheavals of the time led to the reestablishment of a passion play tradition. In Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz, too, religious theatre plays, whose beginnings date back to the Baroque period, had come to a temporary end with the Enlightenment at the end of the 18th century. In 1901, members of the Catholic Journeymen's Association revived the memory of this tradition and re-enacted four scenes from the Passion of Jesus - the Last Supper, the washing of the feet, the prayer on the Mount of Olives and the crucifixion - in the old Kolping House in the form of "living pictures" with vocal accompaniment. Plays in the true sense of the word only came about two decades later.
After his happy return from the First World War, the then senior member of the Neumarkt Kolping Society had the idea of presenting the Passion of the Lord in a "closed play" again in the Palatine city. With a new poem, a text written in blank verse "based on the Oberammergau model" from the pen of the catechist German Mayr, the new tradition began in 1922 and continues to this day.
Apparently, the Neumarkt Passion responded to the religious and spiritual needs of the time, as all ten performances between Easter Monday and Ascension Day were sold out, and due to the great demand, a second season of 13 performances followed in the autumn, again with a large audience. "The play didn't fail to have an impact," summarised the chronicler. "Many people found their way back to the church and to Christ, which was ultimately the best reward for the players."
The enthusiasm, the sympathy and the palpable inner emotion of performers and visitors led us to expect a rapid continuation, but due to adverse circumstances and difficult times, the Neumarkt Passion was not staged again until 1959 and 1964. The deliberations of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) with regard to a renewal of the text and staging were groundbreaking. After a thorough revision of the text by the then parish priest Kaspar Hirschbeck, who removed anti-Jewish overtones from the text, the Neumarkt Passion was performed again in 1984.
Since 1989, the theatre company has been bringing the message of the mystery of the cross to the stage every 10 years. Most recently in March and April 2019 with 18 performances, for the first time under professional direction (Michael Ritz) - a spectacular new edition with over 500 participants
on and behind the stage and a chorus of well over 100 people, with lighting and musical effects that transported the audience back in time to the plot and gave the performance a "peculiar" atmosphere - in the positive sense of the word.
The Franconian Passion Play in Sömmersdorf near Schweinfurt was born in the Holy Year of 1933. They are ultimately due to the enthusiasm of some amateur actors in the theatre group of the men's choral society and the tireless energy of the young primary school teacher, organist and parish clerk Guido Halbig. However, as historians suspect, it is possible that the traumatic experiences of the First World War were still having an effect here too, opening up a new, more personal approach to the story of Jesus' suffering for many people and challenging them to encounter the Christian Passion on stage (Jochen Ramming).
Halbig found a suitable text in Würzburg, which had been performed there in March 1918 under episcopal patronage. This was probably the version later often referred to as the Faßnacht Passion, a passion play "in the style of a mystery play" staged by the brothers Adolph and Georg Faßnacht in Freiburg (1921), which was also the basis for a film production with which the Faßnacht brothers went on tour in the United States.
In 1933 and 1934, successful seasons took place in the garden of the village inn with the participation of 70 adult players, but as early as 1935, the National Socialist regime prohibited further performances in Sömmersdorf. It was not until years after the Second World War, when club life began to flourish again, that the theatre also experienced a new beginning, so that in 1957 the first post-war Passion could be performed in Münsterholz on the outskirts of the village, on a specially built open-air stage with an auditorium that could accommodate 1,800 spectators at the time. The founding of a Passion Play Association (1956) and its membership of several theatre associations, including the Bund Deutscher Amateurtheater, helped the Franconian Passion Play Sömmersdorf (since 1961) to achieve continuity. Since 1968, a five-yearly
Rhythm naturalised.
Hundreds of participants - all inhabitants of the small village - on and behind the stage turn the Passion into a religious folk play in the true sense of the word. The professional directors (Marion Beyer, Hermann J. Vief) endeavour to preserve the tried and tested while opening up new horizons at the same time. Since 2013, the emotional impact of the scenes - which follow the dramaturgical three steps of "Hosanna - Ecce Homo - Hallelujah" - has been enhanced by specially composed stage music.
Sömmersdorf has undoubtedly gained an important place in the Bavarian passion play landscape. In 2020, it was even included in the Bavarian State Register of Intangible Cultural Heritage of UNESCO as "a sign of appreciation and recognition for the personal commitment in connection with the preservation and passing on of traditions. This commitment is an expression of a living attachment to one's homeland and makes a valuable contribution to preserving cultural diversity in Bavaria."
And yet the motivation of the people in Sömmersdorf is broader. They are not only interested in preserving a cultural value or in cultural and community work, but also in communicating the liberating and inspiring message of Jesus to a wide audience.
The Passion Play in Altmühlmünster (a district of Riedenburg) began as an attempt to give new impetus to community life. A member of the parish council had the idea of reuniting the people of the region through joint theatre work. With great enthusiasm, the parishioners brought the central mystery of faith to the church stage for the first time in 1983 in fascinating images, followed by seven further theatre series from 1984 to 2017, with a new production planned for Lent 2023. Although the joy of acting is a driving force for village theatre practice that should not be underestimated, the participants in this serious play also bear witness to and profess Christ.
The Lower Bavarian community of Saal an der Donau also saw its Passion Play as an intense Lenten experience, a "profession of faith", which was performed in 1986, 1992 and 2004 by the Passion Play Circle, more than 130 lay actors from both Christian denominations, together with the church choirs and the Liederkranz in the Christkönigskirche. The popular play depicted the Passion of Jesus Christ in a sequence of ten groups of scenes, from the entry into Jerusalem to the descent from the cross and the lamentation of Jesus.
The text was written by playwright Peter Buberger and director Klaus Kern. The psychological motivation of human actions takes into account the feelings of the contemporary audience. For example, the play presents the different reactions and behaviours of Peter, who deeply regrets his betrayal, the threefold denial, but does not lose his faith in God's grace, and of Judas, who despairs over his actions: "Should I endure this torture any longer? Carry this agony within me? No! Not one step further. I want to end this cursed life here and now!"
Since 1996, a procession of images - unique in Eastern Bavaria - has also been held in Saal on Palm Sunday, in which life-size wooden figures are carried on stretcher frames to commemorate the story of Jesus Christ's suffering and redemption. Participants in the procession and spectators merge into a community of faith.
III.
The versatility and adaptability of passion plays is demonstrated by a play written by local poet Theo Schaumberger, which was performed in 1988, 1989 and 2010 in the Maria Hilf pilgrimage church in Fuchsmühl in the Upper Palatinate. Of course, the focus here is also on the last hours of Jesus' life, but now entirely from the perspective of Judas. The monologues and dialogues cleverly scattered throughout the plot as well as two interludes mark the agonising path of the disciple from ardent admirer of his master to traitor and finally to tormented and despairing.
In this - psychologically skilful - portrayal of the character, Judas becomes the dominant figure in the drama. Thus, the remorse for his deed, which is briefly reported in Matthew's Gospel (Mt 27:3-5), is also given a broad portrayal by the author in order to give form to the human vacillation between hope and hopelessness, the struggle between insight, willingness and ability. Despite the message of salvation that Simon of Cyrene conveys to him as a positive counter-figure, he ultimately finds no peace, as he lacks faith in divine forgiveness.
With the play "The last hours and the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ", written by Michael Sellner, the spiritual play culture in Perlesreut in the Bavarian Forest, which dates back to the 17th century, was brought back to life in August 2005. More than 100 amateur actors bring the 16 scenes to life. From the very beginning, a special emphasis was placed on the music; in 2018, the actors were accompanied live by a rock band for the first time, creating an extraordinarily tense atmosphere.
Artistic director Klaus Wegerbauer saw this type of production, which utilised the popular form of the musical, as a modern and contemporary way of directly captivating the audience. The scenic arc ranges from the entry into Jerusalem to the proclamation of the resurrection, with the emphasis on human emotions, feelings and actions: cowardice and fear (Peter's denial), indifference and opportunism (Pilate), arrogance and mockery (Herod), but also support and compassion (Simon of Cyrene), charity and helpfulness (Joseph of Arimathea).
The newly awakened interest in the Passion Play in Bavaria in the 20th century has also repeatedly led back to plays and texts from the 16th to 18th centuries. It is often cultural and literary interest, sometimes also local historical interest in connection with an upcoming anniversary, which promotes the rediscovery and in some cases the rediscovery of older play texts, their re-enactment and sometimes also the revival of an extinct Passion Play tradition.
The charisma of a passion play written by the famous master of Knittelvers from Nuremberg, Hans Sachs, in 1558 and published in print two years later, extends to the present day. Sachs, a committed follower of Martin Luther, wrote this play, which he dedicated to the town council of Amberg, despite the reformer's well-known reservations about the passion piety of the late medieval papal church.
It is not known whether "Der gantz Passion", which according to the title was to be performed "before a Christian community", was performed in the electoral capital and residence of the Upper Palatinate at that time. It was not until more than 400 years later that it was performed. In a modernised version, which was published in 1955 in the series Christliche Gemeindespiele by the Munich-based Christian-Kaiser-Verlag, the theatre group from Amberg's Max-Reger-Gymnasium brought the Passion Play to the stage in the Paulanerkirche on the occasion of the 950th anniversary of the town in 1984.
This school play was not intended to be repeated from the outset. In contrast, a new tradition was established in 1985 at the Franconian Open-Air Museum in Bad Windsheim. Every Good Friday, the Sachs Passion is impressively staged there in seven acts by the Marktbergel theatre group and the Bad Windsheim singers. The museum hill is transformed into Mount Golgotha and, as they climb up together, the audience is included in the play of the amateur actors as "the people" and is suddenly part of the crowd shouting "Crucify him!". The play in front of old, listed farmhouses gives the performance a decidedly archaic character, while the musical accompaniment lends the action an immense density of emotion.
A Baroque Passion play text from Altomünster, which has been preserved in the monastery archives in a fair copy under the title Passio Domini nostri Jesu Christi, should also be mentioned briefly. Wilhelm Liebhart, a local historian and university lecturer, was responsible for the contemporary version of the play in 1988. In the production in the Altomünster monastery church by the musicologist Klaus Haller, who also composed the Passion music in the Baroque oratorio style, the crucifixion was deliberately omitted in view of the incomplete surviving text and the play ended in a procession of all participants accompanied by choral singing in the style of the old Good Friday processions.
Freising also remembered its own theatre tradition, but set a special accent. In 1998, the most important example of baroque Benedictine theatre in Bavaria was brought to the stage. As part of the celebrations to mark the 300th anniversary of the founding of the episcopal college on Marienplatz, the famous Rosner Passion, written for Oberammergau in 1750 and also performed in Freising in 1761 and 1763 when Father Ferdinand Rosner was professor of rhetoric at the local lyceum, was given a modern production by the WerkStück theatre group from the Freising adult education centre.
The play was performed in a greatly abridged form. The adaptation by Alois Fink for the famous rehearsal performance in Oberammergau in 1977 served as the basis for the text, which has now been further streamlined by theatre director Diethart Lehrmann in view of the already high demands placed on the amateur actors. The Rosner Passion was repeated in Freising in 2000 and 2010, both times during Lent and thus in the run-up to the Oberammergau Plays, which allowed for an interesting comparison between the 19th century Daisenberger text and its baroque predecessor.
Even in the 21st century, rediscoveries of baroque play texts are possible. In Weilheim, the anniversary year 2010, the celebration of the town's 1000th anniversary, brought a magnificent new production of the two Passion and Resurrection plays from the pen of the Weilheim parish priest Johann Älbl from 1600 and 1615 respectively. In the 17th and 18th centuries, a large number of performances of the Tragoedia Passionis and the Comedia Resurrectionis Domini have survived until the Enlightenment put an end to these pious plays.
After a break of 238 years, the two plays were staged again in 2010, with the actors coming from the Weilheim population as they once did. Even in the abridged and carefully modernised version by director Yvonne Brosch and set designer Andreas Arneth, the powerful, often humorously coarse language of the text lost none of its original impact, and the original ideas of the baroque author still managed to impress today's audience. However, the wish expressed in connection with the revival not to let the eloquent text fall into oblivion again has not yet been fulfilled.
A new Passion Play tradition has been established in the Upper Palatinate town of Kemnath. The impetus came from the town's 975th anniversary celebrations. An older play, the Passion Comedi from 1731, which had been performed every year on the market square until 1770, was stored in the Episcopal Central Archive in Regensburg. The new version of the baroque text with a careful linguistic modernisation was a great success in 1983, which led to the decision to continue the play every five years. After the original reduction of the play to five scenes - the end of the play in 1983 was the judgement of Jesus' death - the Passion was extended in 1988 to include the Stations of the Cross and Crucifixion, and in 2003 a specially written scene of the Last Supper was added, which was missing from the original text.
An essential part of the Kemnath Passion is the music. It emphasises the action on the Passion stage and lends it a deeper dimension by expressing strong emotions such as Mary's grief at her farewell in Bethany, her bewilderment at Jesus' death on the cross, but also the deep trust in eternal life in the final piece Pie Jesu by Andrew Lloyd Webber. The Kemnath Passion will be performed again in 2025, and even then the epilogue speaker will give the audience something to think about with regard to Jesus' devoted sacrifice. "For trusting in God, he bore his suffering and also bears our lives / Listen! And live in this trust: God will not abandon you!"
IV.
These examples show that, even and especially in the 20th century, Passion Plays are not a church spectacle and are far more than just pious theatre. At their deepest, they are proclamation and prayer, the foundation for a sustainable community. Each of the performers can experience what an intense spiritual experience the Passion Play is for him or her. And perhaps it will be possible to let a small spark leap from the stage into the audience and convey these values and ideas to a larger audience.
The Passion Plays are an excellent introduction to the true encounter with the crucified and risen Lord (Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer). Only faith as a driving force has allowed these plays to survive for such a long time, in a fruitful tension between continuity and modernisation, between looking back and starting anew. A lively Passion Play landscape will always emerge or be able to emerge in the future where there is the possibility of integrating the different, discussing the controversial and trying out the new.
