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

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

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

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

by James Shapiro

Paperback

$17.00 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Qualifies for Free Shipping
    Choose Expedited Shipping at checkout for delivery by Thursday, April 4
  • PICK UP IN STORE
    Check Availability at Nearby Stores

Related collections and offers


Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780375708527
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date: 06/12/2001
Pages: 272
Product dimensions: 5.24(w) x 7.94(h) x 0.57(d)

About the Author

James Shapiro is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. The author of Shakespeare and the Jews, he lives in New York City and Thetford, Vermont.

Read an Excerpt

Preface

Oberammergau is justly celebrated as one of the few places in the world where theater still matters. Communal and personal identity have become inextricably bound to the Passion play that has been staged in this village, generation after generation, since 1634, and probably longer. Over the past four centuries, millions of visitors have traveled to Oberammergau to see these villagers reenact the suffering, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of Jesus, and most have left profoundly moved by the experience.

Oberammergau is also notorious for staging a play — praised by Hitler himself and sharply attacked by Jewish organizations — that has long portrayed Jews as bloodthirsty and treacherous villains who conspire to kill Jesus. That it is performed in the country responsible for the Holocaust has only intensified this criticism.

As a theater historian I found myself fascinated by the ways in which the tradition of Passion playing in Oberammergau was rooted in the world of medieval and Renaissance drama. But as someone who also writes and teaches about the interplay of art and anti-Semitism, I was disheartened by the ways in which this unbroken tradition had helped sustain the troubling legacy of medieval anti-Judaism. Like Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Richard Wagner's music, and Ezra Pound's Cantos, the Oberammergau play appeared to be one of those works of art whose virtues were deeply compromised.

In 1998 I learned that the villagers had voted to let reformers — rather than traditionalists — direct their Passion play in the year 2000. I had also heard that these reformers were interested in ridding the play of its anti-Jewish elements. The questions swirling around the Oberammergau Passion play were ones that I had long been wrestling with: Should offensive art be censored or boycotted? Why did the reconciliation of Jews and Catholics set in motion by Vatican II seem to have ground to a halt? How was one to deal with mutual accusations of collective guilt: that the Jews (as the Passion play had long maintained) were responsible for the death of Jesus, and that the German people were collectively responsible for the Holocaust?

The making of the millennial production of Oberammergau's Passion play offered a rare opportunity to confront these issues directly.

Table of Contents

PrefaceIX
1Next Year in Jerusalem3
2Staging the Passion44
3The Myths of Oberammergau101
4In Hitler's Shadow137
5Tradition and the Individual Talent187
A Note on Sources225
Acknowledgments237

What People are Saying About This

Stephen J. Dubner

An utterly fascinating account of a phenomenon that is at once ephemeral and eternal--a once-a-decade drama saddled with centuries of passion. With scholarly ingenuity and journalistic wits, Shapiro dissects an event that has, as he himself writes, 'profound implications for interfaith relations in a post-Holocaust world.' This book will go down as a model of cultural commentary--and a treasure.(Stephen J. Dubner, author of Turbulent Souls: A Catholic Son's Return to His Jewish Family)

Mary Gordon

An obsessively readable treatment of this vexed subject. The drama serves as such a perfect metaphor for the anguished and complex problem of Christian anti-Semitism. Shapiro speaks with a scholar's authority, but with none of the obfuscation that such scholarship often entails. He shed a most welcome light on this dark and murky terrain.(Mary Gordon, author of Final Payments)

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews