September 23 – Oberammergau and the Passion Play

After breakfast we headed off through more of the lovely Bavarian countryside.

We arrived late morning at our hotel in Eittal, unloaded our luggage and headed to Oberammergau for some wandering around.  Many of the houses have wonderful painted murals, quaint flower boxes and a very alpine feel to them.

The second reason we are in Germany...today we attended the Passion Play in Oberammergau.  We spent some time wandering around Oberammergau.  It is delightful village with painted houses,

cuckoo clocks,

and wood carvings. 

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More Oberammergau
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The Passion Play typically gives out blankets as the evenings can get cold.  However, because of the pandemic the aren’t doing that this year so we stopped and bought blankets.

We had a quick trip back to the hotel for lunch and then back to Oberammergau for the play.  No photos of the play were allowed.  The play is in two parts, three hours in the afternoon and three in the evening.  We drove back to our hotel for dinner. 

A bit of history about the play.  In 1633, when the plague was ravaging Europe, the people of Oberammergau, a small village in Bavaria, prayed to God to spare the village.  There had already been deaths, but they promised that if there were no more deaths, they would put on a Passion Paly every 10 years. 

There were no more deaths, and they kept their pledge.  They have put on the Passion Play every ten years with a few exceptions that resulted in off-year productions such as the 2020 performance being performed in 2022 due to the Covid pandemic.  In all those centuries, only two were fully cancelled – 1770 because it (and all Passion Plays) was banned by Elector Maximillian and again in 1940 (World War II). 

The theater seats 5,000 people and estimates for attendance during a season (mid-May to early October) is around 500,000.  All the over 2000 people involved in the production are residents of Oberammergau.  It has a huge choir that is very integral to the performance.  It is all in German, but we had a book that translated everything for us.  It was powerful and moving.  And the Crucifixion was incredible, very convincing.  It was very moving for all of us.