Introductions for Traditional Christmas Plays

GA 274 — 3 January 1917, Dornach

Introduction

on the occasion of a performance of the Paradeis-Spiel and the Christ-Geburt-Spiel for German internees from Basel and Bern.

Allow me, before all else, to extend to you my warmest greetings and express our satisfaction at being able to see you in our midst today! Please accept what we are about to offer you as something quite modest. It is not intended to be a sample of an excellent performance or a special artistic achievement, but rather, I would say, more of a historical presentation. And so that expectations are not raised too high, I would just like to hint at how it came about that we have been performing these two and some other such Christmas plays, Paradeis plays and the like, in a somewhat indirect relationship with our cause for years in a simple, primitive way.

These are not actually Christmas plays or New Year's plays, as one might otherwise see them, although of course there is a similarity. I myself came up with these Christmas plays because when I came to the Vienna Technical University in 1879, I met a professor there who then became a very close friend of mine: Karl Julius Schröer. I myself consider Karl Julius Schröer – he has been dead for many years – to be one of the most important Germanic researchers of modern times, although, as is the case with many important people, he has received very little recognition. He was initially a professor at the University of Budapest, then he spent a long time at the German Lyceum in Bratislava, a city on the way from Vienna to Budapest. And after the Germanist researcher Weinhold had first begun to record the existing remains of old Christmas and New Year plays, Karl Julius Schröer in the 1850s became aware from Pressburg of special representations of Christmas and New Year plays, Paradeis plays, which took place among the local farmers near Pressburg.

These Christmas plays are, of course, related to the Christmas plays and New Year plays in German-speaking areas that are otherwise collected. However, I would say that the plays collected by Schröer from the Oberufer region – which can be reached on foot from Pressburg in half an hour and is a German enclave – are more genuine, to the extent that they are a historical document. They are more genuine than those in the other areas. They have been preserved in such a way that the farmers, who were considered suitable, were simply summoned by one of their elders in the fall, when there was no longer any field work to be done. And now these Christmas plays, which have been preserved traditionally, were rehearsed. I would say that they were rehearsed in a truly beautiful and solemn way, not as if it were just something artistic that one wanted to accomplish, but rather it was connected to the whole heartfelt unfolding of the people. You can see this from the fact that those farmers who were allowed to participate in the play, that is, those who were supposed to act in it, really did prepare themselves morally during the weeks when the rehearsals took place and when they were supposed to learn their lines. They should be morally worthy to perform in these plays.

There were four conditions that the oldest, who had those manuscripts that were passed down from generation to generation, communicated. So those who were allowed to learn these things had to fulfill four conditions. The first was that they were not allowed to go to a Dirndl during the time when they were supposed to be learning and preparing for the performances; secondly, they were not allowed to sing Schelmenlieder, which was explicitly presented to them as a kind of catechism; thirdly, they were not allowed to get drunk, committing any kind of excess, which was otherwise, of course, common practice in these areas on Sundays; and fourthly, they had to obediently obey the one who was the oldest and who taught them these things, who rehearsed them with them, and so on. If they were found worthy, a copy was given to them, and they were allowed to keep it. The following year, those who were further designated had to have these things copied. So it was not that easy for Schröer to get them right when he found out that such things were being performed out in the country. Because the things had been copied from year to year. A Christmas play had even been very corrupted in 1809 during a flood; and it was also very difficult to read, with various passages missing in different manuscripts. But they were so ingrained in this people that, for example, Schröer, when he was making these lists, realized from certain contexts: Something must be missing there. So he called in a man who had taught the lessons and said: Think about whether something is missing. Yes, yes, said the man, and was then sometimes able to recite pages of whole verses that had been left out and forgotten for years.

So, these things were rehearsed, weren't they? And as I said, in the four weeks before Christmas until Epiphany, they were performed among the farmers. And we would like to give you a kind of historical memory: with this. While the Christmas play performances can be traced back to the 11th century, they have remained in the form in which they had lived in the 16th and 17th centuries. And they remained conservative. From year to year, the same form was performed. It was then performed so that the farmers went around to the various villages; no other music was allowed to be heard. Schröer himself once saw that the farmers were received with music in a village where they went to perform the plays. They were very offended, because they said they were not comedians. They really performed it, I would say, like a kind of worship.

We actually wanted to perform it in the simple, primitive way that the farmers did it, but there are some things we can't do. The farmers went around the village; the things were simply performed in an ordinary inn. And there are still many other things that we cannot do in the same way. The devil, for example, always dressed much earlier, went through the village with a cow horn, blew into the windows and told the people that they had to come. If he found a cart, he jumped up, pulled the people down and took them to the performance. And so the people went from village to village and performed these things in dialect, in an Austrian dialect, quite similar to Bavarian, a southern German dialect that is native to the areas around Bratislava.

From this point of view, I ask you to take these things, preserved from earlier centuries, as unpretentiously as they are meant.