On Popular Christmas Plays

A Christmas memory

Almost forty years ago, about two or three days before Christmas, my dear teacher and fatherly friend Karl Julius Schröer told me in his small library room on Vienna's Salesianergasse about the Christmas plays that he had attended in Oberufer in western Hungary in the 1850s and published in Vienna in 1862.

The German colonists of this area brought these plays with them from more western regions and continued to perform them every year around Christmas in the old manner. They preserve true gems of German folk theater from a time that predates the very first emergence of the modern stage.

There was something in Schröer's narrative that gave an immediate sense of how, in the sight of the plays, a piece of sixteenth-century folklore stood before his soul. And he described it from the full. He had grown fond of German folklore in the various Austro-Hungarian regions. Two areas were the subject of his particular study. This folklore and Goethe. And when he spoke about anything from these two areas, it was not a scholar who spoke, but a whole person who only used his erudition to express what connected him personally to it with all his heart and intense sense of purpose.

And so he spoke at the time about the rural Christmas games. The poor people of Oberufer, who trained as actors every year around Christmas time for their fellow villagers, came to life from his words. Schröer knew the nature of these people. He did everything he could to get to know them. He traveled around the Hungarian highlands to study the language of the Germans in this area of northern Hungary. He is the author of a “Dictionary of the German Dialects of the Hungarian Highlands” (1858) and a “Description of the German Dialects of the Hungarian Highlands” (1864). You don't have to particularly enjoy reading dictionaries to be captivated by these books. The outer garment of the presentation has nothing attractive at first. Schröer seeks to do justice to the scientific approach of German studies of his time. And this approach also appears quite dry at first in his work. But if you overcome this dryness and engage with the spirit that prevails when Schröer shares words, expressions, puns, and so on from the vernacular dialects, you will perceive revelations of the purest humanity in truly charming miniature images. But you don't even have to rely on that. Because Schröer precedes his dictionaries and grammatical lists with prefaces that provide the broadest cultural-historical outlooks. A rare and sensible personality falls in love with popular customs, interspersed with other popular customs and on the verge of extinction within the same, and describes them as one would describe a dusk.

And out of this love, Schröer also wrote a dictionary of the Heanzen dialect of western Hungary and one of the very small German language island of Gottschee in Krain.

There was always something of a tragic undertone when Schröer expressed what he felt when he looked at this declining folk life, which he wanted to preserve in the form of science.

But this feeling intensified to an intimate warmth when he spoke of the Oberufer Christmas plays. A respected family kept them and passed them on from generation to generation as a sacred treasure. The oldest member of the family was the teacher, who inherited the art of playing from his ancestors. Every year, after the grape harvest, he selected the boys from the village whom he considered suitable as players. He taught them the game. During their apprenticeship, they had to endeavor to live up to the seriousness of the matter. And they had to faithfully submit to everything the teacher prescribed. For in this teacher lived a time-honored tradition.

The performances that Schröer saw were in an inn. But both the players and the audience brought the warmest Christmas spirit into the house – and this mood is rooted in a genuine, pious devotion to the Christmas truth. Scenes that inspire the noblest edification alternate with bawdy, humorous ones. These do not detract from the seriousness of the whole. They only prove that the plays date from a time when the piety of the people was so deeply rooted in the mind that it could perfectly well coexist with naive, folksy merriment. For example, the pious love with which the heart was given to the baby Jesus did not suffer when a somewhat clumsy Joseph was placed next to the wonderfully delicately drawn Virgin; or when the intimately characterized sacrifice of the shepherds was preceded by their rough conversation and droll jokes. Those who originated the plays knew that the contrast with coarseness does not diminish, but rather increases, the heartfelt edification of the people. One can admire the art that draws the most beautiful mood of pious emotion from laughter, and precisely by doing so keeps away dishonest sentimentality.

In writing this, I am describing the impression I received after Schröer, to illustrate his story, took out the little book from his library in which he had shared the Christmas plays and from which he now read me samples. He was able to point out how one or the other player behaved in facial expression and gesture when saying this or that. Schröer now gave me the little book (“Deutsche Weihnachtspiele aus Ungern”, described and shared by Karl Julius Schröer. Vienna 1862); and after I had read it, I was often able to ask him about many things related to the folk's way of playing and their whole conception of this particular way of celebrating Christmas and the Feast of the Epiphany.

In his introduction to the plays, Schröer writes: “Near Pressburg, half an hour's drive away, on an island off the island of Schütt, lies the village of Oberufer, whose lords are the Palfy family. Both the Catholic and Protestant communities there belong to the Pressburg parishes and have their services in the city. A village schoolmaster for both communities is also a notary, and so all the honorifics of the village are united in one person. He is hostile to the games and despises them, so that to this day they have been ignored and completely isolated from all “intellectuals” by farmers and performed for farmers. Religion makes no difference, Catholics and Protestants take equal parts, in the presentation as well as in the spectator seats. The players, however, belong to the same tribe, known as the Haidbauern, who, in the 16th or early 17th century, immigrated from the area around Lake Constance” – in a footnote, Schröer points out that this is not entirely certain – ”and were said to have been still entirely Protestant in 1659.” — “In Oberufer, the owner of the games has been a farmer since 1827. He had already played the angel Gabriel as a boy, then inherited the art from his father, who was then the ‘master teacher’ of the games. He had inherited the writings, the clothing and other equipment purchased and maintained at the expense of the players, and so the teaching position was also passed on to him.” When the time for practicing comes, “they copy, learn, sing day and night. In the village, no music is tolerated. When the players go across the country to play in a neighboring village and there is music there, they move on. When the village musicians were once played in one village in their honor, they indignantly asked if they were considered comedians?” “The plays now last from the first Sunday in Advent to Twelfth Night. There is a performance every Sunday and holiday; every Wednesday there is a performance for practice. On the other weekdays, the players travel to neighboring villages to perform.” — ‘I consider it important to mention these circumstances because they show how a certain consecration is still associated with the event today.’

And when Schröer spoke about the plays, his words still had an echo of this consecration.

I had to keep what I learned from Schröer in my heart. And now members of the Anthroposophical Society have been performing these plays at Christmas time for a number of years. During the war they were also allowed to perform them for the sick in the military hospitals. We have also been playing them every Christmas season at the Goetheanum in Dornach for many years. This year will be no exception. As far as possible under the changed circumstances, strict attention is paid to the fact that the way the plays are performed and presented gives the audience a picture of what it was like for those who kept these plays in the folk mind and regarded them as a worthy way to celebrate Christmas.