Introductions for Traditional Christmas Plays

GA 274 — 30 December 1917, Dornach

Introduction

on the occasion of the performance of old German Christmas plays for German prisoners of war interned in Switzerland.

On behalf of all friends of our anthroposophical movement and especially those who are united here at this building, I have the deepest satisfaction today to greet you most warmly. You will believe in the sincere warmth of this greeting. After all, the feelings we have for you are imbued with everything we are experiencing as a result of those painful events of the present, which are having such a profound impact not only on the general fate of the world, but also on the fate of each individual, especially those whose visit we are meant to be here today.

What we would like to offer you are Christmas plays. These performances should be taken without pretension; we ask you to bear this in mind. They are an attempt to revive old memories of European culture. And perhaps I can most easily explain what these plays are about if I take the liberty of drawing your attention to how I myself first became acquainted with them.

The content of these plays is not directly related to our anthroposophical movement, but this is only apparent. Only someone who misunderstands anthroposophically oriented spiritual science can believe that such tasks as those associated with these Christmas plays are not within its scope. After all, the interest in everything that concerns the spiritual life and the development of humanity must be within its scope.

I myself was introduced to these plays decades ago, and specifically to the plays that are to be rehearsed here today, through my old friend and teacher, Karl Julius Schröer. Karl Julius Schröer discovered precisely these plays, which are old, which have been performed somewhere, there or there, in earlier times and which are now being renewed. You can see many such plays everywhere. But the two plays we will be talking about today, and some others, differ from other Christmas plays in quite a significant way. Karl Julius Schröer found them on the island of Oberufer in the forties and fifties of the 19th century. This is an island off the island of Schütt, which is formed by the Danube below Pressburg, where Hungary borders Austria. Since the 16th or at least since the beginning of the 17th century, these Christmas plays have been preserved among the German farmers, the so-called Haidbauern, all in personal tradition. They have been passed down from generation to generation. The Haidbauer, from whom Karl Julius Schröer took them over, had actually only copied the individual roles. A complete manuscript of these things was hardly found. They were performed every year by the Oberufer farmers, whenever they could, when the people among the farmers of Upper Hungary had the time.

Let us first take a brief look at how it was done. I would like to describe it in the following way. When the autumn work, the harvest work, was done, one of the most respected farmers in the area, who had inherited these plays and the right to perform them from his ancestors, would gather a group of young men and rehearse with them from October, November to December, right through to Advent. The sentiment associated with the performance of these plays is actually what is most touching about the matter. It was truly, by going to the performance of these plays revealing the biblical mysteries, that the whole thing was associated with a deep moral consciousness. This is already evident from the conditions imposed on those who wanted to play in them. The farmer who was in charge of the plays in the 1850s communicated these conditions to Karl Julius Schröer in the following way. He said: “Those boys who were allowed to perform, who were to play a role in the plays, had to fulfill the following conditions for the entire period of preparation until the festival: first, they were not allowed to visit any of the girls during that time; second, they were not allowed to sing any rogue songs; and thirdly, they had to lead an honorable life throughout the weeks, which was obviously a very difficult fact for some; fourthly, they had to follow the master unreservedly in all things related to the preparations for the plays, who rehearsed them with them. That was just one of the most respected farmers.

These plays were performed in front of Catholics and Protestants mixed together, and the performers themselves were too. The plays had a religious character, but not the slightest confessional character. And hostility from any side towards what was to be presented in these plays was actually only on the part of the “intellectuals” in Oberufer. Even back then, the intelligentsia was opposed to such folksy Christmas plays, to such performances inspired by that ethos. Fortunately for us, the intelligentsia at that time consisted of a single schoolmaster who was also the mayor and notary. He was a single personality, but he was dead set against the plays. And the farmers had to perform them in defiance of the local authorities.

Only boys were allowed to participate in the performances as actors. For obvious reasons, we have to refrain from this practice; in fact, we cannot imitate some of the refinements associated with those performances, although we try to give an idea of what the farmers were able to offer back then through our own performances.

The boys also had to play the female roles. Eva, Maria and so on were performed by boys. After weeks of rehearsals, the whole procession of players set off. In front walked someone carrying a so-called Kranawittbaum, a juniper tree used as a symbol of paradise or a Christmas tree. Behind him came the star-bearer, who carried the star on a pole or on a so-called “scissors”. You will see it later: the scissors are designed so that the star can be made closer or further away by rolling up the star scissors. And so the procession moved towards the inn where the performance was to take place. The clothing of those people who performed a part, except for the devil and the angel, was only put on in the inn itself. While the people were dressing, the devil, whom you will also get to know, ran around the village, making mischief with a cow horn, drawing attention to himself, speaking to people. In short, he made sure that as many people as possible appeared in the inn where the performance was to take place. The performance itself was such that the audience sat in a kind of horseshoe shape, with the stage in the middle of this horseshoe, which of course we cannot imitate either.

You will see that it is essentially biblical memories that were performed. First of all – the performances were staged between three and five o'clock – the Shepherds' Christmas Play was usually performed, which we present here as the second play. It depicted the proclamation of Christ Jesus by the angel, the birth of Christ Jesus, that is, everything that our second play, the Shepherds' Play, will present. Then came the Fall of Man, which depicts the Fall of Man in Paradise – our first play to be performed today – followed, as a rule, by a carnival play. Just as in ancient Greek tragedy a satyr play always followed the drama, so here a carnival play, a comic epilogue, followed. It is noteworthy that the characters who represented sacred individuals – Mary, Joseph and so on, who appeared in the first plays – were not allowed to appear in the carnival play; a certain religious sentiment was associated with these plays.

Some of the details are very interesting to follow. If you watch the Shepherds' Play – the second to be performed – today, you will see three innkeepers, at whom the wandering Joseph, who is portrayed as an old man in all these plays, seeks shelter for himself and Mary. They are rejected by the first two innkeepers and led to the stable by the third. This was originally different, but it is still portrayed as such in Oberufer: originally there was an innkeeper, a landlady and her maid. And the idea was linked to that: the innkeeper rejects Joseph and Mary, as does the landlady, only the maid offers them shelter in the stable. Because it probably became difficult to find the necessary young people to play the innkeeper and her maid during the performances, the roles were then transferred to two other innkeepers, so that we now have three innkeepers. But as I said, with the old Oberufer play, this is definitely not to be taken in the same way as with the other Christmas plays. The Christmas plays, Easter plays, Passion plays and so on go back to ancient performances, which all actually originated from church celebrations. In the churches, the clergy originally performed all kinds of things related to the Holy History after the Christmas celebrations, Easter celebrations and so on. Then, in particular due to the fact that the audience grew larger and larger and that the stories were translated from Latin into the vernacular, the plays gradually moved from the ecclesiastical to the secular and were performed outside of the church by farmers.

And so we present these plays to you here. They have been preserved in their original form, which they probably took on in the 16th century. They have been preserved because they most likely originated in southern Germany during the early days of German development, namely in the Lake Constance area. When the various tribes that originally came from the Lake Constance area of southern Germany migrated to Austria and Hungary in earlier centuries, they took these plays with them. These plays were also present in the homeland, but in the homeland they were constantly changing. There were numerous people, clergy, scholars, who had influence over these things, and the things were corrupted. They were preserved unadulterated under the care of those who, in the midst of the Slavic and Magyar populations, had to rely on themselves and who, over the centuries, preserved things in their original form. That is why it was a real find for Schröer when he discovered these plays among the Germans of Upper Hungary in the forties and fifties of the 19th century. For those with a more refined sensibility, they are not at all what the Christmas plays that are so frequently performed today, which have changed over the centuries, are. Rather, they are truly something that takes us back to a part of Europe's past in centuries past. Karl Julius Schröer was particularly suited to preserve something like this. He was truly an exemplary man, a remarkable man, and his memory must be preserved with such things; he was deeply imbued with the idea of how such and similar things actually created the cement that culturally held together this state structure of Austria on the land that was created by those colonists who migrated from the Rhine, from southern Germany, from central Germany, migrated to Upper Hungary, migrated from west to east; also to Styria, to the more southern regions of Hungary, migrated as the Zipser Saxons to Transylvania, migrated as Swabians to the Banat, which, I would like to say, tragically gave up the land on which this culture developed. Now, Schröer was completely imbued with this cultural idea when he refreshed the old memories contained in the Christmas plays. He did many other things as well. And when you immersed yourself with him in his cultural studies, which were so devoid of all coloration of chauvinism but which were deeply imbued with the cultural mission associated with them, you first recognized the full value of the life's work of this man, who collected everything that had already been more or less eradicated from these areas by the mid-19th century due to the spreading cultural trends that dominate this area today. He left us his grammar and dictionaries of the German dialects in Hungary and the Spiš region, which he had carefully prepared, and the Heanzen and Gottscheer dialects, which he treated based on the grammar. His life's work, which he dedicated to literary history and Goethe, actually left a wonderful description of everything that brings together the entire German element, which underlies all cultural areas of this Central European state of Austria as the actual cultural cement. And that is what lives on as a special idea in the research of Karl Julius Schröer. So that we do not just have the product of philological or linguistic scholarship before us, but something that has been collected with heart and mind for that which lives as spirit in these things. And that is why it is so satisfying to be able to refresh these things a little.

Our friend Leopold van der Pals has tried to refresh the musical element of these things a little, and with his music you will see the performances here. So one can say that what we are offering you here is the product of the real mystery plays, the various Christmas plays, as they were spread throughout Europe in earlier centuries. But they should not be preserved in the form in which, for example, the world has caricatured the so-called Oberammergau Passion Plays. There is nothing left of what was actually intended in those ancient times.

However, some things cannot be revived. For example, a special way of reciting the play, which was still practised among the farmers in the old way, even in the 1950s, cannot be revived. With the exception of particularly solemn moments, when God the Father speaks and the like, everything that was presented was presented by the actors in such a way that they spoke in the spirit of their verse. The verse had four uplifts, he appeared, the tone moved by one tone on the fourth uplift. A certain person, let's say: Joseph, whom you will find later, the husband of Mary, for example, spoke the first heave in the pitch C, then E, then F, then went back again on the fourth heave. The other characters spoke in such a way that they began with a C, and then had the pitch E three times, then went back to C again. With great art, but with a simple, restrained art, these things were presented and one really felt the Christmas and Easter mood with transitions into the secular, without sentimentality, without any element of sentimentality. So in these things is contained what people felt and sensed as their spiritual life when they stepped out of the church into the world.

Some passages that may be more difficult to understand will also be explained. The whole thing was of course presented in the local dialect, and there are many things in it that may not be immediately understandable. For example, in the Paradise play, God the Father is referred to as “a Reeb.”

When it is said: Eve was made from a rib, you must not think that it is a wrong pronunciation here, when it is said that Eve is created by God the Father from a rib of Adam. The farmer really does not say rib, but rib. The devil then reports in the course of the Herod play once, he has a few rats. Ratten is a corruption of Ratten. Then perhaps it is not generally known the word “Kletzen”.

Hätten Adam und Eva Kletzen gfress'n,
's wär ihna tausendmal nützer gwes'n.

Now, Kletzen is something that was always eaten at Christmas in the area where the plays were performed: it is made from dried plums and pears. This is said so that people have something to latch onto that they already know. Then there is the word frozzeln, which the devil uses. It means to tease, to mock, to make fun of. There are a number of expressions in both plays that may not be immediately understandable.

So you will see that one saying in particular is used by the innkeepers:

I åls a wirt von meiner gstålt
Håb in mein haus and loplaynt gwålt.

One might think that the innkeeper thinks he is an innkeeper of a particular stature, shape and has power in his house. But this refers to rank. I, as an innkeeper of my rank, of my standing. He who is so well-positioned, has such prestige, has power in his house, namely the power to attract customers to his inn. So, an innkeeper who knows how to give his house such a reputation as I do, has the power to bring his house into such a reputation that it has many people as guests. That is what is meant by this expression. Clamor means rumor; the farmer uses the word for a rumor that spreads. The angel says: Elizabeth is in the rumor that she is barren. - So it means: the rumor is that she is barren. But the farmer says: rumor, he does not say: the rumor. Then you will hear the word from one of the shepherds: all around. That happens often, it is the custom.

I lent him my gloves, as I often do. Then you will often find the word bekern among the shepherd's speeches. This is common in the area where the plays were performed for something that has happened; a story that has been told. When they see each other, they say: they were cold, frozen; or the expression: the ground is as smooth as a mirror.

An especially pretty word is the way one shepherd is made aware that it is already late, that the birds are already chirping – in the farming language, that is piewen.

Stichl, get up, the forest creatures are squeaking already.

In the second line, Gallus says:

Stichl, get up, the carters are cracking their whips on the road.

Kleschen, that's cracking the whip. The carters are already cracking their whips on the road.

These are some of the remarks I wanted to make at the beginning of our performance. Overall, the plays speak for themselves. They are the most beautiful reflection of everything that took place in earlier centuries throughout Central Europe, in such festive plays. For example, there is the St. Gallen manuscript, which consists of 340 verses. There are plays that go back to the 11th century. But I believe that all that exists in this regard cannot quite match the intimacy that lies precisely in the Oberufer plays, which were preserved in the Pressburg area until the 1850s.

It is fair to say that these plays are among those things that have unfortunately been lost, that have disappeared and that one would so much like to revive. For they are truly such that through them one remembers what is so intimately connected with the development of our spiritual life.

That is what I wanted to say to you before the performance.