Oberammergau residents fulfill vows: the Passion Play begins on Saturday with a two-year delay
Created: 05/10/2022, 08:00
By: Günter Bitala
The Passion Play was postponed by two years due to the pandemic, and is now taking place for the fourth time, directed by Christian Stückl, from May 14th to October 2nd.
There is no play on Mondays and Wednesdays.
© Günter Bitala
Oberammergau – Christian Stückl does not believe that the passion play originally planned for 2020 could have stopped the corona virus;
nor that the pandemic will end now - 2022 - with the belated fulfillment of the vow: "It didn't work in 1634 with the plague and didn't work when the Spanish flu raged in 1920."
Times were different back then, says Stückl: "During the turmoil of the 30-year war, people couldn't do much about the epidemic other than their prayers. Today there are vaccines, masks, keep your distance." next weekend the people of Oberammergau will climb onto the huge open-air stage – as they actually do every ten years: singing, making music and acting, telling the 'greatest story of mankind';
namely, those of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Perhaps the pandemic will be impressed by this after all?
103 performances are planned until Sunday, October 2, 2022.
Hopefully full seats.
There are still enough tickets available for last-minute visitors.
Last Wednesday, representatives of the international media were allowed to watch, film and photograph the rehearsals.
Very young reporters and photographers have been there, but also veteran “hands” who have managed three or four passion seasons.
TV crews filmed the picturesque village scenery all morning or caught so-called original sounds from the locals.
The journalists tried to fathom the supposed spirit of the passion.
That's what they do in every year of passion: Because there must be something special behind it, that every ten years hundreds of thousands of people stream into the village in the middle of the Ammergau mountains.
At this point, the young journalists have no idea that they themselves will be fascinated by the passion in just a few hours.
An older colleague says: “You'll see, when people sing 'Hail to you, oh David's son', I'll cry.
That's always the case.”
Günter Bitala