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0 The pandemic canceled this German community’s once-a-decade play. Now the show must go on./ Lonely Planet / Travel Exclusive News / Janbolat Khanat / Almaty Office
Nearly 400 years ago, the town of Oberammergau made a promise to host a Passion Play every 10 years to fend off the plague. After a different pandemic delayed the latest production, this year’s show is extra special.
When I arrived in Oberammergau on a balmy Saturday evening in May, the town of 5400 in the Bavarian Alps was bustling. Security guards in neon vests directed traffic along the main street as pedestrians meandered between packed restaurants, souvenir stands and shops filled with handcrafted wood statues and biblical scenes.
Tour buses shuttled visitors into town from local hotels and guesthouses. And backstage at a pastel-colored theater, hundreds of locals donned long, flowing robes and sorted through piles of prop swords and wooden staffs as they prepared for the second act of the once-in-a-decade Passion Play.
For a few months every ten years, Oberammergau is home to a spectacle that draws the attention of people around the world. The Passionsspiele, or Passion Play, is a 5-hour production depicting Jesus’s life, crucifixion and death. After a two-year pandemic delay, between mid-May and early October nearly half a million people are expected to descend on Oberammergau to sit before its massive open-air stage and take in the play.
On the five nights a week the play is performed, the town’s population can be nearly doubled: Hotels here and nearby fill to capacity, and locals rent out space in their guest rooms to meet the demand.
Tourists hide from the rain under the awning of a building with a painted fresco of the village’s historic Passion Play
Tourists hide from the rain under the awning of a building with a painted fresco of the village’s historic Passion Play © Lukas Bezila / Lonely Planet
A promise made, a promise kept
This phenomenon is years, or rather centuries, in the making. In 1633, amid an outbreak of the plague, villagers made a pledge to God: If he spared the townspeople from the plague, they would perform the Passion Play every 10 years. For nearly 400 years since, Oberammergauers have kept that promise (and remained plague-free). Back in 2020 should have been its 42nd edition.
I came to Oberammergau to understand how this town, full of fresco-covered houses, about an hour’s drive south of Munich has managed to maintain what’s become known as the longest-running play in the world—and what it’s been like to get back to it after a two-year delay. What I found was a true community effort:
Nearly a third of the town’s 5400 residents are in the play in some form, and seemingly everyone else plays an indirect role in managing the chaos that descends on the town once a decade, from restaurant owners and shopkeepers to ticket collectors and firefighters. The play has such an outsize impact on the town that in Oberammergau, people measure their lives not in years but in Passion Plays.
Cast members of Oberammergau’s 2022 Passion Play © Lukas Bezila / Lonely Planet
A family affair
For Christian Gerold, who runs a butcher shop in the center of town that’s been in his family for six generations, this year’s Passion Play is his eighth. (He’s quick to note that he’s not actually that old: there have been two special editions of the play, one in 1977 and 1984, that bring up his count.) Gerold starts work before dawn so he can finish in time to play a member of the high council on stage.
“I’m personally very proud of it: I mean, in my case, my whole family joins in,” he said when I asked him what the play means to him, gesturing to others in the shop lining up sausages behind the glass counter.
His two daughters, his two sons-in-law and his three grandchildren are all part of the play this year. “The youngest is just five months old and was on stage on Sunday,” he told me, beaming.
In the days I spent in Oberammergau, I found that Gerold’s story is the norm here. Sitting out to eat one evening, I eavesdropped on a young man sitting a few tables over. I could tell he was in the play from his beard and long hair, since play participants are not allowed to cut their hair or shave for more than a year before the play begins.
He was proudly telling a tourist that he was one of two men playing John, and that his father is Pontius Pilate. When I emailed the main press contact for the play, I paused when the name looked familiar—as it turns out, he is one of two men playing the role of Jesus. (It seemed fitting that Jesus, at least in Oberammergau, does his own PR.)
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