Introductions for Traditional Christmas Plays

GA 274 — 23 December 1921, Dornach

Introduction

We will take the liberty of presenting to you in the next few days some German Christmas plays that have been preserved from older folklore. Today we will begin by presenting a so-called Paradeis play. These Christmas plays are deeply rooted in Central European-German folklore and, when viewed today, are actually a living historical representation. The revival of these plays gives us a much more vivid picture of the development of the people than any other historical account. In Europe, drama originated from church performances. We can trace such church performances historically quite far back, to the 12th century; but they actually go back much further. From the 12th century, there are reports of a frequently performed ecclesiastical drama called “The Antichrist”; this “Antichrist” existed in the most diverse forms. And it is extraordinarily remarkable to see how magnificent struggles were depicted in this “Antichrist”, which took place between the European and Asian peoples.

Later, the suffering and birth of Christ and other church memories were first presented by clergymen in the churches themselves. They then became secular events, with the clergymen first performing these sacred plays outside the church, and then the performances were also taken over by secular persons.

One particularly noteworthy play, for example, was that of the “Ten Virgins”. A performance of the “Ten Virgins” that took place in Eisenach in 1322, at the foot of the Wartburg, was so moving that the present Landgrave Frederick “with the bitten cheek” was disconsolate that, as this play stated, it was not possible for even the Holy Virgin to redeem the exiles through her intercession. The powerful impression made on him by this play with this tendency struck him down. He wasted away and died as a result of the impression made on him by this play of the “Ten Virgins.” This story is told a great deal throughout the Middle Ages that followed. In short, we find traces of such sacred plays throughout Central Europe,

These spiritual plays, which then became popular, appear to us in the following centuries in the most varied forms as festival plays, Christmas plays, Easter plays or carnival plays. It is particularly interesting to note how we can follow the migrating German tribes taking these plays with them on their wanderings.

We must be clear about the fact that more German tribes living in the west of Central Europe, who then moved eastwards, to Austria, populated the Bohemian regions, but especially Hungary, took their plays with them as a precious, sacred possession and performed these plays in an extraordinarily remarkable way. These plays lived on in the people without the educated classes taking much notice of them. It was only when German studies of antiquity gained a certain depth in the 19th century that individual scholars of antiquity began to perform these plays based on popular tradition. One of those who went to great lengths to track down such folk traditions in the most diverse German areas of Hungary was my old friend and former teacher Karl Julius Schröer. It is thanks to him that the German Christmas plays, especially from the Pressburg area, have been preserved, at least in writing. Karl Julius Schröer found these Christmas plays in northwestern Hungary, in the Pressburg area, in the so-called Oberufer area. These Christmas plays showed, through their content and language, that they had been brought from more western areas by German tribes migrating east. Schröer was able to establish that such Christmas plays were handed down from generation to generation like a sacred treasure, rehearsed each time the Christmas season approached, and then performed at Christmas time. These Christmas plays were in the possession of one particularly favored family. When the grape harvest was over in the fall and the country folk had some free time, the owner of the manuscript of such Christmas plays would gather the local boys he thought suitable and prepare them for performance at Christmas time by rehearsing them.

There was something very special about such performances; they were treated as having a deeply religious side. This is evident from the strict rules that existed for those who had rehearsed these plays for many weeks under the direction of the master. Such rules were, for example, that those boys who were chosen to study and perform this Christmas play had to show unconditional obedience to their master in an extraordinary way during the time of rehearsals; that they had to lead a moral life during this time. The special rule was that during this time they were not allowed to go to the Dirndl, as the vernacular put it. When the Christmas plays were rehearsed, they were usually performed in an inn, and in a truly folksy way. As best as possible today, we want to capture this folksy quality in our performance, so that, in a sense, the way Christmas was celebrated within this tradition can come to life before our eyes.

A special feature of these plays was their use of folksy humor. And it is quite wrong to perform these folk plays sentimentally. All sentimentality must be avoided. If you perform them sentimentally, you simply show that you have no understanding for an element that was particularly present in the religious life of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern times. People could be deeply religious, but they were so in a humorous way, without false mysticism, without sentimentality. And they could tell genuinely folksy jokes and display genuinely folksy humor between descriptions of the most exalted scenes. People did not want to unlearn how to laugh by looking up to the most exalted things in prayer. This is characteristic of the special religiosity of earlier times, which was healthy in this respect. It was only in later times that religiosity became unhealthy.

Today we will take the liberty of presenting the play that usually preceded the others: the Paradeis play, depicting how God leads Adam and Eve into paradise and how they are tempted by the devil. “Adam and Eve” is the festival that precedes December 25th in the calendar, the actual Christmas. And for the Christmas season, which was later the Christmas season, something like the Christ-Birth Play, which we will allow ourselves to do tomorrow, was usually planned for the Christmas season, followed by this Paradise Play.

In this performance, the text of the introduction to the “Paradeis-Spiel” reconstructed by Rudolf Steiner was spoken for the first time. - No transcripts are available of the performances on December 25 and 26.