can be done; but it takes fourteen hours of very hard work,--three
changes,--an hour's waiting at one place, and half an hour at another,
and the road for the last half of the day so rough that it could
honestly be compared to nothing except horseback riding over bowlders
at a rapid rate. This is from Gemunden to Munich: if there is any
other way of getting there, I think nobody would go by this; so I
infer that there is not. You must set off, also, at the unearthly hour
of 5 A.M.,--an hour at which all virtues ooze out of one; even honesty
out of cabmen, as I found at Cassel, when a man to whom I had paid
four marks--more than twice the regular fare--for bringing us a five
minutes' distance to the railway station, absolutely had the face to
ask three marks more. Never did I so long for a command of the German
tongue. I only hope that the docile Brita translated for me literally
what I said, as I handed him twelve cents more, with, "I gave one
dollar because you had to get up so early in the morning. You know
very well that even half that sum is more than the price at ordinary
times. I will give you this fifty pfennigs for yourself, and not
another pfennig do you get!" I wish that the man that invented the
word _pfennig_ had to "do a pour of it for one tousand year," as dear
old Dr. Pröhl said of the teapot that would not pour without spilling.
I think it is the test-word of the German language. The nearest
direction I could give for pronouncing it would be: fill your mouth
with hasty-pudding, then say _purr-f-f-f-f-f_, and then gulp the
pudding and choke when you come to the _g_,--that's a _pfennig_; and
the idea of such a name as that for a contemptible thing of which it
takes one hundred to make a quarter of a dollar! They do them up in
big nickel pieces too,--heavy, and so large that in the dark you
always mistake them for something else. Ten hundredths of a
quarter!--you could starve with your purse loaded down with them.
In the station, trudging about as cheerily as if they were at home, was
a poor family,--father, mother, and five little children,--evidently
about to emigrate. Each carried a big bundle; even the smallest
toddler had her parcel tied up in black cloth with a big cord. The
mother carried the biggest bundle of all,--a baby done up in a
bedquilt, thick as a comforter; the child's head was pinned in tight
as its feet,--not one breath of air could reach it.
"Going to America, ma'am," said Brita, "I think they must be. Oh,
ma'am, there was five hundred sailed in one ship for America, last
summer,--all to be Mormons; and the big fellow that took them, with
his gold spectacles, I could have killed him. They'll be wretched
enough when they come to find what they've done. Brigham Young's dead,
but there must be somebody in his place that's carrying it on the
same. They'd not be allowed to stay in Denmark, ma'am,--oh, no,
they've got to go out of the country."
All day again we journeyed through the hay harvest,--the same
picturesque farm-houses, with their high roofs thatched or dark-tiled,
their low walls white or red or pink, marked off into odd-shaped
intervals by lattice-work of wood; no fences, no walls; only the
coloring to mark divisions of crops. Town after town snugged round its
church; the churches looked like hens with their broods gathered close
around them, just ready to go under the wings. We had been told that
we need not change cars all the way to Munich; so, of course, we had
to change three times,--bundled out at short notice, at the last
minute, to gather ourselves up as we might. In one of these hurried
changes I dropped my stylographic pen. Angry as I get with the thing
when I am writing with it, my very heart was wrung with sorrow at its
loss. Without much hope of ever seeing it again, I telegraphed for it.
The station-master who did the telegraphing was profoundly impressed
by Brita's description of the "wonderful instrument" I had lost. "A
self-writing pen,"--she called it. I only wish it were! "You shall
hear at the next station if it has been found," he said. Sure enough,
at the very next station the guard came to the door. "Found and will
be sent," he said; and from that on he regarded me with a sort of
awe-stricken look whenever he entered the car. I believe he considered
me a kind of female necromancer from America! and no wonder, with two
self-writing pens in my possession, for luckily I had my No. 2 in my
travelling-bag to show as sample of what I had lost.
At Elm we came into a fine hilly region,--hills that had to be
tunnelled or climbed over by zigzags; between them were beautiful
glimpses of valleys and streams. Brita was nearly beside herself, poor
soul! Her "Oh's" became something tragic. "Oh, ma'am, it needs no
judge to see that God has been here!" she cried. "We must think on the
Building-Master when we see such scenery as this."
As we came out on the broader plains, the coloring of the villages
grew colder; unlatticed white walls, and a colder gray to the roofs,
the groups of houses no longer looked like crowds of furry creatures
nestled close for protection. Some rollicking school girls, with long
hair flying, got into our carriage, and chattered, and ate cake, and
giggled; the cars rocked us to and fro on our seats as if we were in a
saddle on a run-away horse in a Colorado cañon. All the rough roads I
have ever been on have been smooth gliding in comparison with this. At
nine o'clock, Munich, and a note from the dear old "Fraulein" to say
that her house was full, but she had rooms engaged for me near by. The
next day I went to see her, and found her the same old inimitable dear
as ever,--the eyes and the smile not a day older, and the drollery and
the mimicry all there; but, alas! old age has come creeping too close
not to hurt in some ways, and an ugly rheumatism prevents her from
walking and gives her much pain. I had hoped she could go to
Oberammergau with me; but it is out of the question. At night she sent
over to me the loveliest basket of roses and forget-me-nots and
mignonette, with a card, "Good-night, my dear lady,--I kiss you;" and
I am not too proud to confess that I read it with tears in my eyes.
The dear, faithful, loving soul!
THE VILLAGE OF OBERAMMERGAU.
Mountains and valleys and rivers are in league with the sun and
summer--and, for that matter, with winter too--to do their best in the
Bavarian Highlands. Lofty ranges, ever green at base, ever white at
top, are there tied with luminous bands of meadow into knots and
loops, and knots and loops again, tightening and loosening, opening
and shutting in labyrinths, of which only rivers know the secret and
no man can speak the charm. Villages which find place in lands like
these take rank and relation at once with the divine organic
architecture already builded; seem to become a part of Nature; appear
to have existed as long as the hills or the streams, and to have the
same surety of continuance. How much this natural correlation may have
had to do with the long, unchanging simplicities of peoples born and
bred in these mountain haunts, it would be worth while to analyze.
Certain it is that in all peasantry of the hill countries in Europe,
there are to be seen traits of countenance and demeanor,--peculiarities
of body, habits, customs, and beliefs which are indigenous and
lasting, like plants and rocks. Mere lapse of time hardly touches
them; they have defied many centuries; only now in the mad
restlessness of progress of this the nineteenth do they begin to
falter. But they have excuse when Alps have come to be tunnelled and
glaciers are melted and measured.
Best known of all the villages that have had the good fortune to be
born in the Bavarian Highlands is Oberammergau, the town of the famous
Passion Play. But for the Passion Play the great world had never found
Oberammergau out, perhaps; yet it might well be sought for itself. It
lies 2,600 feet above the sea, at the head of a long stretch of
meadow lands, which the River Ammer keeps green for half the year,--at
the head of these, and in the gateway of one of the most beautiful
walled valleys of the Alps. The Ammer is at once its friend and foe;
in summer a friend, but malicious in spring, rising suddenly after
great rains or thaws, and filling the valley with a swift sea, by
which everything is in danger of being swept away. In 1769 it tore
through the village with a flood like a tidal wave, and left only
twelve houses standing.
High up on one of the mountain-sides, northeast of the village, is a
tiny spot of greensward, near the course of one of the mountain
torrents which swell the Ammer. This green spot is the Oberammergauers'
safety-gauge. So long as that is green and clear the valley will not
be flooded; as soon as the water is seen shining over that spot it is
certain that floods will be on in less than an hour, and the whole
village is astir to forestall the danger. The high peaks, also, which
stand on either side the town, are friend and foe alternately. White
with snow till July, they keep stores of a grateful coolness for
summer heats; but in winter the sun cannot climb above them till nine
o'clock, and is lost in their fastnesses again at one. Terrible
hail-storms sometimes whirl down from their summits. On the 10th of
May, 1774, there were three of these hail-storms in one day, which
killed every green blade and leaf in the fields. One month later, just
as vegetation had fairly started again, came another avalanche of
hail, and killed everything a second time. On the 13th of June, 1771,
snow lay so deep that men drove in sledges through the valley. This
was a year never to be forgotten. In 1744 there was a storm of rain,
thunder, and lightning, in which the electric fire shot down like
javelins into the town, set a score of houses on fire, and destroyed
the church. One had need of goodly devotion to keep a composed mind
and contented spirit in a dwelling-place surrounded by such dangers.
The very elements, however, it seems, are becoming tamed by the
inroads of civilization; for it is more than fifty years since
Oberammergau has seen such hail or such lightning.
The village is, like all Tyrolean villages, built without apparent
plan,--no two houses on a line, no two streets at right angles,
everybody's house slanting across or against somebody else's house,
the confusion really attaining the dignity of a fine art. If a child
were to set out a toy village on the floor, decide hastily to put it
back in its box, sweep it all together between his two hands, then
change his mind, and let the houses remain exactly as they had fallen,
with no change except to set them right side up, I think it would make
a good map of Oberammergau. The houses are low, white-plastered, or
else left of the natural color of the wood, which, as it grows old, is
of a rich dark brown. The roofs project far over the eaves, and are
held down by rows of heavy stones to keep them from blowing off in
wind-storms. Tiny open-work balconies are twined in and out
capriciously, sometimes filled with gay flowers, sometimes with hay
and dried herbs, sometimes with the firewood for winter. Oberammergau
knows in such matters no law but each man's pleasure. It is at each
man's pleasure, also, where he will keep his manure-heap; and usually
he elects to keep it close to the street, joining his barn or his
house, or his neighbor's barn or house, at convenience. Except that
there are many small sluices and rivulets and canals of spring water
wandering about the village to carry off the liquidation, this would
be intolerable, and surely would create pestilences. As it is, the
odors are abominable, and are a perpetual drawback to the delight one
would otherwise take in the picturesque little place.
There are many minute gardens and bits of orchard of all possible
shapes,--as many and as many-sided as the figures in the first pages
of Euclid. I saw one, certainly not containing more than eight square
feet, which was seven-sided, fenced and joined to two houses. Purple
phlox, dahlias, and lilacs are the favorite out-door flowers. Of these
there were clumps and beds which might have been transported from New
England. In the balconies and window-sills were scarlet geranium,
white alyssum, and pansies.
The most striking natural feature of Oberammergau is the great
mountain-peak to the southwest, called the Kofel. This is a bare,
rocky peak of singularly bold contour. On its summit is set a large
cross, which stands out always against the sky with a clearness almost
solemn. The people regard this Kofel as the guardian angel of their
village; and it is said that the reply was once made to persons who
were urging the Passion Play actors to perform their play in England
or America,--
"We would do so if it were possible; but to do that, it would be
needful to take the entire village and our guardian spirit, the
Kofel."
I arrived in Oberammergau on a Wednesday, and counted on finding
myself much welcomed, three days in advance of the day of the play.
Never was a greater mistake. A country cousin coming uninvited to make
a visit in the middle of a busy housewife's spring house-cleaning
would be as welcome. As I drove into the village the expression of
things gave me alarm. Every fence, post, roof, bush, had sheets,
pillow-cases, or towels drying on it; the porches and grass-plots were
strewn with pillows and mattresses; a general fumigation and
purification of a quarantined town could not have produced a greater
look of being turned wrong side out. This is what the cleanly
Oberammergau women do every week during the Passion Play season. It
takes all the time intervening between the weekly representations of
the play to make ready their bedrooms and beds.
I was destined to greater alarms and surprises, however. The Frau
Rutz, to whom I had written for lodgings, and to whose house I drove
all confident, had never heard of my name. It became instantaneously
apparent to me that I probably represented to her mind perhaps the
eleven hundred and thirty-seventh person who had stopped at her door
with the same expectation. Half of her house was being re-roofed, "to
be done by Sunday;" all her bed-linen was damp in baskets in the
kitchen; and she and her sister were even then ironing for dear life
to be done in time to begin baking and brewing on the next day.
Evidently taking time by the forelock was a good way to come to a
dead-lock in Oberammergau. To house after house I drove,--to Frau
Zwink's bird-cage, perched on the brink of a narrow canal, and half
over it, it seemed. Just before me stood a post-carriage, at Frau
Zwink's door; and as I stepped out two English ladies with bags,
bundles, and umbrellas disappeared within Frau Zwink's door, having
secured the only two available perches in the cage. The Frau came
running with urgent solicitations that I should examine a closet she
had, which she thought might answer.
"Oh, is she the lady of the house, and she barefoot?" exclaimed my
Danish maid, aghast at the spectacle. Yet I afterwards heard that the
Frau Zwink's was one of the notably comfortable lodging-places in the
town. In another house were shown to us two small dark rooms, to reach
which one must climb a ladder out of the common living-room of the
family. From house after house came the response, "No rooms; all
promised for Saturday." At intervals I drove back to Frau Rutz's for
further suggestions. At last she became gradually impressed with a
sense of responsibility for our fortunes; and the mystery of her
knowing nothing about my letter was cleared up. Her nephew had charge
of the correspondence; she never saw the letters; he had not yet had
time to answer one half of the letters he had received. Most probably
my letter might be in his pocket now. Friendship grew up between my
heart and the heart of the Frau Rutz as we talked. Who shall fathom or
sound these bonds which create themselves so quickly with one, so
slowly with another? She was an Oberammergau peasant, who knew no word
of my tongue; I a woman of another race, life, plane, who could not
speak one word she could comprehend, and our interpreter was only a
servant; but I think I do not exaggerate when I say that the Frau and
I became friends. I know I am hers; and I think if I were in
Oberammergau in need, I should find that she was mine.
By some unexplained accident (if there be such things) the best room
in all Oberammergau was still left free,--a great sunny room, with a
south window and east windows, a white porcelain stove, an
old-fashioned spinnet, a glass-doored corner-cupboard full of
trinkets, old-fashioned looking-glasses, tables, and two good beds;
and of this I took possession in incredulous haste. It was in the
house of George Lang, merchant, the richest man in the town. The
history of the family of which he is now the leading representative is
identified with the fortunes of Oberammergau for a century past. It is
an odd thing that this little village should have had its line of
merchant princes,--a line dating back a hundred years, marked by the
same curious points of heredity as that of the Vanderbilts or Astors
in America, and the Rothschilds in Europe; men as shrewd, sharp,
foreseeing, fore-planning, and executive in their smaller way, and
perhaps as arbitrary in their monopolies, as some of our
millionnaires.
In 1765 there lived in the service of the monastery at Ettal a man
named Joseph Lang. He was a trusted man, a sort of steward and general
supervisor. When the monastery was suppressed, Joseph Lang's
occupation was gone. He was a handy man, both with tools and with
colors, and wandering down to Oberammergau, halted for a little to see
if he could work himself in with the industry already established
there of toy-making. At first he made simply frames, and of the
plainest sort; soon--perhaps from a reverent bias for still
ministering to the glory of the church, but probably quite as much
from his trader's perception of the value of an assured market--he
began to paint wooden figures of saints, apostles, Holy Virgins, and
Christs. These figures at first he imported from the Tyrol, painted
them, and sent them back there to be sold. Before long he had a large
majority of the Oberammergau villagers working under his direction as
both carvers and colorers in this business,--a great enlargement of
their previous trade of mere toy-making.
This man had eleven sons. Ten of them were carvers in wood, one was a
painter and gilder. All these sons worked together in the continuing
and building up of their father's business. One of them, George Lang,
perceiving the advantage of widening business connections, struck out
for the world at large, established agencies for his house in many
countries, chiefly in Russia, and came home to die. He had six sons
and four or five daughters, it is not certainly known which; for, as
the present George Lang said, telling this genealogical history in his
delightful English: "The archives went up in fire once, so they did
not know exactly." All six of these sons followed the trades of
carving, painting, and gilding. One of them, the youngest, Johann,
continued the business, succeeding to his father's position in 1824.
He was perhaps the cleverest man of the line. He went from country to
country, all over Europe, and had his agents in America, England,
Australia, Russia. He was on terms of acquaintance with people in
high position everywhere, and was sometimes called "The King of
Oberammergau." Again and again the villagers wished to make him
burgomaster or magistrate, but he would not accept the position.
Nevertheless it finally came to pass that all legal writings of the
town, leases, conveyances, etc., made, were signed by his name as well
as by the names of the recognized officials. First, "the magistracy of
Oberammergau," then, "Johann Lang, Agent," as he persisted in calling
himself, ran in the records of the parties to transactions in
Oberammergau at that time.
In 1847 the village began to be in great trouble. A large part of it
was burned; sickness swept it; whole families were homeless, or
without father or brother to support them. Now shone out the virtues
of this "King of Oberammergau," who would not be its burgomaster. He
supported the village: to those who could work he gave work, whether
the work had present value to him or not; to those who could not work
he gave food, shelter, clothes. He was a rich man in 1847, when the
troubles began. In 1849 he was poor, simply from his lavish giving. He
had only two sons, to both of whom he gave an education in the law.
Thus the spell of the succession of the craft of wood-workers was
broken. No doubt ambition had entered into the heart of the "King of
Oberammergau" to place his sons higher in the social scale than any
success in mere trade could lift them. One of these sons is now
burgomaster of the village; he is better known to the outside world as
the Caiaphas of the Passion Play. To one knowing the antecedents of
his house, the dramatic power with which he assumes and renders the
Jewish High-Priest's haughty scorn, impatience of opposition, contempt
for the Nazarene, will be seen to have a basis in his own pride of
birth and inherited habit of authority.
The other son, having been only moderately successful in making his
way in the world as a lawyer, returned to Oberammergau, succeeded to
his father's business in 1856, but lived only a short time, dying in
1859. He left a widow and six children,--three sons and three
daughters. For a time the widow and a sister-in-law carried on the
business. As the sons grew up, two of them gradually assumed more and
more the lead in affairs, and now bid fair to revive and restore the
old traditions of the family power and success. One of them is in
charge of a branch of the business in England, the other in
Oberammergau. The third son is an officer in the Bavarian army. The
aunt is still the accountant and manager of the house, and the young
people evidently defer to her advice and authority.
The daughters have been educated in Munich and at convents, and are
gentle, pleasing, refined young women. At the time of the Passion Play
in 1880 they did the honors of their house to hundreds of strangers,
who were at once bewildered and delighted to find, standing behind
their chairs at dinner, young women speaking both English and French,
and as courteously attentive to their guests' every wish as if they
had been extending the hospitality of the "King of Oberammergau," a
half-century back.
Their house is in itself a record. It stands fronting an irregular
open, where five straggling roadways meet, making common centre of a
big spring, from which water runs ceaselessly day and night into three
large tanks. The house thus commands the village, and it would seem no
less than natural that all post and postal service should centre in
it. It is the largest and far the best house in the place. Its two
huge carved doors stand wide open from morning till night, like those
of an inn. On the right-hand side of the hall is the post-office,
combined with which is the usual universal shop of a country village,
holding everything conceivable, from a Norway dried herring down to
French sewing-silk. On the left-hand side are the warerooms of
wood-carvings: the first two rooms for their sale; behind these, rooms
for storing and for packing the goods, to send away; there are four of
these rooms, and their piled-up cases bear testimony to the extent of
the business they represent.
A broad, dark, winding stairway leads up to the second floor. Here are
the living-rooms of the family; spacious, sunny, comfortable. At the
farther end of this hall a great iron door leads into the barn;
whenever it is opened, a whiff of the odor of hay sweeps through; and
to put out your head from your chamber-door of a morning, and looking
down the hall, to see straight into a big haymow, is an odd experience
the first time it happens. The house faces southeast, and has a dozen
windows, all the time blazing in sunlight,--a goodly thing in
Oberammergau, where shadow and shade mean reeking damp and chill. On
the south side of the house is an old garden, chiefly apple-orchard;
under these trees, in sunny weather, the family take their meals, and
at the time of the Passion Play more than fifty people often sat down
at outdoor tables there. These trees were like one great aviary, so
full were they of little sparrow-like birds, with breasts of cinnamon
brown color, and black crests on their heads. They chatted and
chattered like magpies, and I hardly ever knew them to be quiet except
for a few minutes every morning, when, at half-past five, the village
herd of fifty cows went by, each cow with a bell at her neck; and all
fifty bells half ringing, half tolling, a broken, drowsy, sleepy,
delicious chime, as if some old sacristan, but half awake, was trying
to ring a peal. At the first note of this the birds always
stopped,--half envious, I fancied. As the chime died away, they broke
out again as shrill as ever, and even the sunrise did not interrupt
them.