Oberammergau: The Troubling Story of the World's Most Famous Passion Play

by James Shapiro

The Bavarian village of Oberammergau has staged the trial, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ nearly every decade since 1634. Each production of the Passion Play attracts hundreds of thousands, many drawn by the spiritual benefits it promises. Yet Hitler called it a convincing portrayal of the menace of Jewry, and in 1970 a group of international luminaries boycotted the play for its anti-Semitism. As the production for the year 2000 drew near, James Shapiro was there to document the newest wave of obstacles that faced the determined Bavarian villagers. Erudite and judicious, Oberammergau is a fascinating and important look at the unpredictable and sometimes tragic relationship between art and society, belief and tolerance, religion and politics.

Genres: History, Religion, Christianity, Nonfiction, Theatre, Germany

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

A specialist in Shakespeare and the Early Modern period, James S. Shapiro is Larry Miller Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1985. He has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Public Library Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and the American Academy in Berlin. In 2011, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He currently serves as a Shakespeare Scholar in Residence at the Public Theater in New York City.

Reviews

[William2 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Astonishing. You can’t make this stuff up.

[Marguerite Hargreaves · Rating 2 out of 5]

I learned about the passion play at Oberammergau when my parents attended it in 1960. When I saw a review of this book, it sounded like it could flesh out their story -- and teach me some things about Germany, where I lived for four years. James Shapiro's book did that, but in excrutiating detail. The detail was in all the wrong places for this reader. I wanted to know more about the human drama involved in the villagers' divisions over the play -- relatively recent history, and -- one would think -- not too difficult information to gather. I didn't care so much about the nitty gritty of the translations of the play. Shapiro himself acknowledged late in the book that the production trumps the translation and even something that seems innocuous on paper can come across as anti-Jewish in action. Nor did I want to read the three-plus pages of his-and-her impressions of the play by Isabel and Richard Burton. If I want to read more, I'll go to the sources cited. I thought there were a couple of glaring omissions in the book, too. Given the Catholic origins of the play, and the fact that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger -- the man who would become pope but who served as John Paul II's enforcer on doctrinal matters when the book was written -- comes from Bavaria, home of the passion play, I expected to see his reflections on it. I found some online. One of the things Ratzinger said, in a 1980 article in Time magazine, was that anti-semitism can be caused by talking about it. That might shed light on the other question with which I was left. My German friends and travel in Germany have left me with a very strong impression of modern German xenophobia, in my experience directed at Turkish immigrants and citizens of the former East Germany. Well, how does Germany acknowledge its historical anti-semitism? By turtling and saying that talking about it will only make it worse? Is there a modern anti-racism movement I don't know about? What do German history textbooks teach about the Holocaust? Shapiro touched on collective guilt briefly (in the context of dialogue in the play), but it didn't help me understand the contradictions I still see in a nation. Maybe it's too off-topic for this book. But it diminished the experience for me.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this book expecting great things - what I read was interesting but not great and overall limited. I thought about saying more but the book doesn't deserve it.

[William Fuller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite having majored in English language and literature in university, I managed to learn precious little about the Passion play genre other than the fact that such existed. Having just read James Shapiro's Shakespeare and the Jews and noting that he had also written a book titled Oberammergau: The Troubling Story of the World's Most Famous Passion Play, I thought that reading it also might be a good opportunity to fill in one of the numerous black holes in my formal education—and I was not wrong. My interest, in other words, was not so much in Oberammergau per se but rather in learning more about this particular dramatic genre.

While Shapiro focuses on the plays performed in one Bavarian village, he includes much fascinating information on the genre itself, and, if we are to focus on a particular example of that genre, why not choose one of the best known? Until I came across this book, I really had no idea just how little I knew of the Passion plays, much less of the political and theological disputes that have roiled around them. The myth of the origin of the play performed in the village of Oberammergau is fascinating in its own right and even generated its own dramatic presentation, once performed a few weeks before the Passion play itself. A review should not give away one of the intriguing surprises in the book, so let us just say that the Passion play might not have existed in this particular village if not for a 14th century outbreak of plague and a communal vow.

Having been raised and educated in the U.S. Bible Belt, a swath through the southern region of the country dominated by conservative Protestant churches, the fact that a Passion play could be viewed as anti-Semitic and could draw condemnation from such organizations as the Anti-Defamation League simply never occurred to me. Shapiro has brightly illuminated that particular bit of ignorance on my part. Rather surprising also are the numerous changes wrought in the presentation of the play over the many decades of its existence, many brought on by commercial considerations (for the decennial play has long been a significant source of income for Oberammergau).

Tensions between traditionalists and commerce-savvy revisionists have done much over the years to form and re-form the play. The Nazi era of Germany had its impact. Catholic theologians weighed in (and some were heavyweights indeed). Facts about the play, the players, the directors, the supporters of tradition and the advocates of modernization, the open air theater itself, and still more facets of the history of the Oberammergau play flow enticingly from Shapiro's pen. The continuing interplay of supporters and detractors of the Passion play have shaped and reshaped it, and Shapiro shows us this molding process as only an adroit storyteller can.

Although this book is now a quarter of a century old, it remains as fresh as when it was published in 2000. It is, at least in my view, a fascinating look at how one Bavarian village built its culture and economy around a dramatic production that reappeared every decade since, if one believes the origin myth, the 14th century. In learning about the play at Oberammergau, one also learns a surprising amount about Passion plays themselves and why they have been the object of protest and, at times, boycott. I find them an interesting bit of literary history, and I find Shapiro's book fully worth the relatively brief time that a reader devotes to enjoying the author's narrative.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Odd that the author chose to end the book before the year 2000 production was staged. Very well researched. This was another weeding find of mine. I wish I had been mature enough to enjoy the nuances of the village on my previous trips throughout he region.