Part 5

Our road averages fair, though a few short stretches are desperately bad--this unevenness we have noted in German roads generally. In one place where the rain has been especially heavy we plunge through a veritable quagmire, and we find spots so rough and stony as to make very uncomfortable going. We finally strike the fine highway which follows the River Lech and brings us into the mountain town of Fussen. It is a snug little place of some five thousand people, nestling in a narrow valley through which rushes a swift, emerald-green river. The Bayerischer-Hof proves a pleasant surprise; one of the cleanest, brightest and best-conducted inns we have found anywhere. Our large, well-lighted rooms afford a magnificent view of the snow-capped mountains, which seem only a little distance away. The landlord, a fine-looking, full-bearded native who speaks English fluently, gives the touch of personal attention that one so much appreciates in the often monotonous round of hotel life. To the rear of the hotel is a beer-garden where brilliant lights and good music in the evening attract the guests and townspeople in considerable numbers. Several other American motor parties stop at the hotel and we especially notice one French car because it carries nine people--and it is not a large car, either! The Bayerischer-Hof is first-class in every particular, and we find when we come to depart that the charges are first-class, too. The Captain is exasperated when we are asked sixty cents per gallon for "benzin" and says we will chance doing better on the way--a decision which, as it happens, causes us no little grief and some expense.

Fussen has an impressive Gothic castle--a vast, turreted, towered, battlemented affair with gray walls and red-tiled roof which looms over the town from the slope above the river. I fear, though, that the castle is a good deal of a sham, for there are spots where the stucco has fallen from the walls, revealing wooden lath beneath, and while in Fussen they call it a "thirteenth-century" building, Baedeker gives its date as two or three hundred years later. It was never intended as a defensive structure, being originally built as the residence of the Bishop of Augsburg. It is now occupied by the district court and the interior is hardly worth a visit.

Oberammergau lies over the mountain to the east of Fussen, scarcely ten miles away in a direct line, but to reach it we are compelled to go by the way of Schongau, about four times as far. We pursue a narrow, sinuous mountain road, very muddy in places. We have been warned of one exceptionally bad hill--a twenty-five per cent grade, according to the Royal Automobile Club itinerary--but we give the matter little thought. It proves a straight incline of half a mile and about midway the sharp ascent our motor gasps and comes to a sudden stop. We soon ascertain that the angle is too great for the gasoline to flow from the nearly empty tank, and we regret the Captain's economy at Fussen. A number of peasants gather about us to stare at our predicament, but they show nothing of the amusement that an American crowd would find in such a situation. A woman engages the Captain in conversation and informs us that she is the owner of a good team of horses, which will be the best solution of our difficulties. "Wie viel?" Seventy-five marks, or about eighteen dollars, looks right to her and she sticks to her price, too. Her only response to the Captain's indignant protests is that she keeps a road-house at the top of the hill, where he can find her if he decides we need her services. And she departs in the lordly manner of one who has delivered an ultimatum from which there is no appeal. A peasant tells us that the woman makes a good income fleecing stranded motorists and that the German automobile clubs have published warnings against her. He says that a farmer near by will help us out for the modest sum of ten marks and offers to bring him to the scene; he also consoles us by telling us that five cars besides our own have stalled on the hill during the day. The farmer arrives before long with a spanking big team, which gives us the needed lift, and the grade soon permits the motor to get in its work.

We reach Oberammergau about two o'clock, only to find another instance where the Captain's economical tendency has worked to our disadvantage. He had declined to pay the price asked by Cook's agency in London for reservation of rooms and seats for the Passion Play and had arranged for these with a German firm, Shenker & Co. at Freiburg. On inquiring at the office of the concern in the village we find no record of our reservations and no tickets to be had. "Shenker is surely a 'rotter,'" says the Captain, immensely disgusted, and it requires no small effort to find quarters, but we at last secure tiny rooms in a peasant's cottage in the outskirts of the village. Tickets we finally obtain by an earnest appeal at Cook's offices, though at considerable premium.

Our quarters are almost primitive in their plainness, but they are tolerably clean; the meals, served in a large dining-hall not far away, are only fair. The people of Oberammergau, our landlord says, face a difficult problem in caring for the Passion Play crowds. These come but once in ten years and during the intervening time visitors to the town are comparatively few. Yet the villagers must care for the great throngs of play years, though many apartments and lodging-houses must stand empty during the interval and the only wonder is that charges are so moderate.

The regular population of Oberammergau is less than two thousand, though during the play it presents the appearance of a much larger place. The houses are nearly all of the prevailing Bavarian style, with wide, overhanging eaves and white walls often decorated with brightly colored frescoes. Through the center of the village rushes the Ammer, a clear, swift mountain stream which sometimes works havoc when flooded. The church is modern, but its Moorish tower and rococo decorations do not impress us as especially harmonious and there is little artistic or pleasing in the angular lines of the new theatre. The shops keep open on every day of the week, including Sunday, until nearly midnight. These are filled with carvings, pottery, postcards and endless trinkets for the souvenir-seeking tourist and perhaps yield more profit to the town than the play itself. There are several good-sized inns, but one has no chance of lodging in one of them unless quarters have been engaged months in advance--not very practicable when coming by motor.

One will best appreciate the magnificent situation of the village from a vantage-point on one of the mountains which encompass the wide green valley on every side. On the loftiest crag of all gleams a tall white cross--surely a fit emblem to first greet the stranger who comes to Oberammergau. In the center of the vale is the village, the clean white-walled houses grouped irregularly about the huge church, which forms the social center of the place. The dense green of the trees, the brighter green of the window-shutters, the red and gray-tile roofs and the swift river cleaving its way through the town, afford a pleasing variety of color to complete the picture. The surrounding green pastures with the herds of cattle are the property of the villagers--nearly every family of this thrifty community is a landholder. The scene is a quiet, peaceful one, such as suits the character of the people who inhabit this lovely vale.

And these same villagers, simple and unpretentious as they are, will hardly fail to favorably impress the stranger. The Tyrolese costume is everywhere in evidence and there is a large predominance of full-bearded men, for the play-actors are not allowed to resort to wigs and false whiskers. They exhibit the peculiarities of the Swiss rather than the Germans and their manners and customs are simple and democratic in the extreme. While the head of the community is nominally the burgomaster, the real government is vested in the householders. The freedom from envy and strife is indeed remarkable; quarrels are unknown and very few of the inhabitants are so selfish as to seek for honor or wealth. The greatest distinction that can come to any of them is an important part in the play; yet there is never any contention or bitterness over the allotments. It would be hard to find elsewhere a community more seriously happy, more healthful or morally better than Oberammergau.

I shall not write at length of the world-famous play. It has been so well and widely described that I could add but little new. It is interesting as the sole survival of a vast number of mediaeval miracle plays, though it has cast off the coarser features and progressed into a really artistic production. I must first of all plead my own ignorance of the true spirit and marvelous beauty of the play ere I saw it. I thought it the crude production of a community of ignorant peasants who were shrewd enough to turn their religion into a money-making scheme and I freely declared that I would scarcely cross the street to witness it. But when the great chorus of three hundred singers appeared in the prelude that glorious Sunday morning, I began to realize how mistaken I had been. And as the play progressed I was more and more impressed with its solemn sincerity, its artistic staging and its studied harmony of coloring. Indeed, in the last named particular it brought vividly to mind the rich yet subdued tones of Raphael and Michael Angelo, and the effect of the rare old tapestries one occasionally finds in the museums. The tableaux in many cases closely followed some famous picture--as Leonardo DaVinci's "Last Supper" or Rubens' "Descent from the Cross,"--all perfectly carried out in coloring and spirit. The costumes were rich and carefully studied, giving doubtless a true picture of the times of Christ. The acting was the perfection of naturalness and the crude and ridiculous features of the early miracle plays--and, not so very long ago, of the Passion Play itself--have been gradually dropped until scarce a trace of them remains. The devil no longer serves the purpose of the clown, having altogether disappeared; and even the tableau of Jonah and the whale, though given in the printed programs, was omitted, evidently from a sense of its ridiculousness. I found myself strangely affected by the simple story of the play. One indeed might imagine that he saw a real bit of the ancient world were it not for the great steel arches bending above him and the telephone wires stretching across the blue sky over the stage.

But I think the best proof of the real human interest of the play is that it held the undivided attention of five thousand spectators for eight long hours on a spring day whose perfect beauty was a strong lure to the open sky. And it did this not only for one day but for weeks, later in the summer requiring an almost continuous daily performance. And, having seen it once, I have no doubt the greater number of spectators would gladly witness it again, for so great a work of art cannot be grasped from a single performance.

Of course Oberammergau has not escaped the critics, but I fancy the majority of them are, like myself before our visit to the town, quite ignorant of the facts as well as the true spirit of the people. The commonest charge is that the play is a money-making scheme on the part of the promoters, but the fact is that the people are poor and remain poor. The actual profits from the play are not large and these are devoted to some public work, as the new theatre, the hospital and the good cause of public roads. The salaries paid the players are merely nominal, in no case exceeding a few hundred marks. The only source of private profit comes from the sale of souvenirs and the entertaining of visitors, but this can not be great, considering that the harvest comes only once in a decade. The play is "commercialized" only to the extent of placing it on a paying basis and if this were not the case there could be no performance. The very fear of this charge kept the villagers up to 1910 from placing their tickets and reservations in the hands of Cook and other tourist agencies, though they were finally persuaded to yield in this as an accommodation to the public. The most effective answer to the assertion that the chief end of the play is money-making may be found in the constant refusal of the villagers to produce it elsewhere than in Oberammergau. Offers of fabulous sums from promoters in England and the United States for the production of the play in the large centers of these countries have been steadily refused, and the actors have pursued their humble avocations in their quiet little town quite content with their meager earnings. Nor have they yielded to the temptation to give the play oftener, though it would be immensely profitable if presented every year or even every alternate year.

We leave the little mountain-girdled valley with a new conception of its Passion Play and its unique, happy people. The majestic spectacle we have witnessed during our stay will linger with us so long as life shall last and it can never be otherwise than a pleasant and inspiring memory.

V

BAVARIA AND THE RHINE

Munich is sixty miles north of Oberammergau and the road is better than the average of German highways. For some distance out of the village we pursue a winding course among the mountains, which affords some glorious vistas of wooded vales and snow-capped Alps while we descend to the wide plain surrounding Munich. We pass through several sleepy-looking villages, though they prove sufficiently wide-awake to collect a toll of two or three marks for the privilege of traversing their streets. A well-surfaced highway bordered by trees leads us into the broad streets of Munich, where we repair to the Continental Hotel.

We remain here several days and have the opportunity of closely observing the Bavarian capital. We unhesitatingly pronounce it the cleanest, most artistic and most substantial city we have ever seen. A number of drives through the main streets and environs reveal little in the nature of slums; even the poorest quarters of the city are solidly built and clean, and next to its beautiful buildings and artistic monuments the cleanliness of Munich seems to us most noteworthy. Perhaps the ladies should be given credit for this--not the members of the women's clubs, who are often supposed to influence civic affairs for the better, but the old women who do the sweeping and scrubbing of the streets, for we see them in every part of the city. This spick-and-span cleanliness of the larger German cities forms a sharp contrast to the filth and squalor of the villages, some of which are even worse than anything we saw in France--but of this more anon.

Munich has a population of more than a half million, and having been built within the last century, is essentially modern. It has many notable public buildings, mainly in the German Gothic style--the Rathhaus, with its queer clock which sets a number of life-size automatons in motion every time it strikes the hour, being the most familiar to tourists. The Royal Palace and the National Theatre are splendid structures and the latter is famous for grand opera, in which the Germans take great delight. Munich ranks as an important art capital, having several galleries and museums, among which the Bavarian National and German Museum are the most notable. There are numerous public gardens and parks, all kept with the trim neatness that characterizes the entire city. And one must not forget the beer-gardens, which play so large a part in German life; the whole population frequents these open-air drinking-places, where beer and other refreshments are served at small tables underneath the trees. The best feature of these is the excellent music which is an invariable accompaniment and Munich is famous for its musicians. The most proficient of these think it no detraction to perform in the beer-gardens, which are attended by the best people of all classes; students, artists, professors, business and military men make up a large proportion of the patrons of these resorts. The gardens are conducted by the big brewers and Munich beer is famous the world over. There is comparatively little manufacturing in the city, though we noted one exceptionally large iron foundry and a great engine works.

During our stay we took occasion to have our car overhauled at a public garage and were impressed with the intelligence and efficiency of the German mechanics. They were usually large, fine-looking fellows, always good-natured and accommodating. The wages paid them are quite small as compared with those of American mechanics, being about one-third as much. At four o'clock in the afternoon everything stops for a quarter of an hour while the workmen indulge in a pot of beer and a slice or two of black bread. We saw this in a large foundry, where several hundred men were employed and were told that the custom is universal.

The Captain, while admitting that most of the German workmen were very good fellows, often treated them in a supercilious manner that I fear sometimes worked against our interests. In fact, the Captain's dislike of everything German was decidedly pronounced and the sight of a company of soldiers usually put him in an ill humor. "I'll have to take a crack at those fellows some time, myself," he would say, in the firm conviction that war between England and Germany was inevitable.

He was not put in a better state of feeling towards our Teutonic hosts when he came to pay the bill at the Continental. Through carelessness unusual on his part, he neglected to have an iron-clad understanding when he engaged accommodations and we had to suffer in consequence. He made a vigorous protest without appreciable effect on the suave clerk, who assured us that the rates of the Continental were quite like the laws of the Medes and the Persians. They were high--yes; but only persons of quality were received. Indeed, a princess and a baroness were among the guests at that moment and he hinted that many applicants were turned away because their appearance did not meet the requirements of the Continental. "We just look them over," said the clerk, "and if we don't like them we tell them we are full." All of which the Captain translated to us, though I should judge from his vehemence in replying to the clerk that he used some language which he did not repeat--perhaps it had no equivalent in English. But it was all to no purpose; we paid the bill and were free to get whatever comfort we could from the reflection that we had been fellow-guests with a princess. "I saw her one day," said the Captain. "She was smoking a cigarette in the parlor and I offered her one of mine, which she declined, though she talked with me very civilly for a few minutes."

We start rather late in the day with Ulm and Stuttgart as objective points. The weather is fickle and the numerous villages through which we pass would be disgusting enough in the sunshine, but they fairly reek in the drizzling rain. The streets are inches deep in filth and we drive slowly to avoid plastering the car--though the odors would induce us to hasten if it were possible. Along the highroad stretch the low thatched cottages; each one is half stable and the refuse is often piled above the small windows. We dare not think of our plight if a tire should burst as we drive gingerly along, but we fortunately escape such disaster. Everywhere in these villages we see groups of sturdy children--"race suicide" does not trouble Germany, nor does the frightfully insanitary conditions of their homes seem to have affected them adversely. On the contrary, they are fat, healthy-looking rascals who--the Captain declares--scream insulting epithets at us. On all sides, despite the rather inclement weather, we see women in the fields, pulling weeds or using heavy, mattock-shaped hoes. We even see old crones breaking rock for road-work and others engaged in hauling muck from the villages to the fields. Men are more seldom seen at work--what their occupation is we can only surmise. They cannot be caring for the children, all of whom seem to be running the streets. Possibly they are washing the dishes. But, facetiousness aside, it is probable that the millions of young men who are compelled to do army service for three years leave more work for the women at home. The railway traveler in Germany sees little of the conditions I have described in these smaller villages; few of them are on the railroad and the larger towns and tourist centers are usually cleanly.

The dominating feature of Ulm is the cathedral, whose vast bulk looms over the gray roofs of the houses crowding closely around it. It is the second largest church in Germany and has one of the finest organs in existence. The great central spire is the loftiest Gothic structure in the world, rising to a height of five hundred and twenty-eight feet, which overtops even Cologne. It has rather a new appearance, as a complete restoration was finished only a few years ago. The cathedral has made Ulm a tourist center and this no doubt accounts for the numerous hotels of the town. We have a very satisfactory luncheon at the Munster, though the charge startles us a little. We cannot help thinking that some of these inns have a special schedule for the man with an automobile--rating him as an American millionaire, who, according to the popular notion in Germany, is endowed with more money than brains.

From Ulm we pursue a poor road along the River Fils to Stuttgart, making slow progress through the numerous villages. The streets are thronged with children who delight in worrying our driver by standing in the road until we are nearly upon them. The Captain often addresses vigorous language to the provoking urchins, only to be answered by an epithet or a grimace.

Stuttgart is a clean, well-built city with large commercial enterprises. We see several American flags floating from buildings, for many Stuttgart concerns have branches in the States. It is a famous publishing center and its interest in books is evidenced by its splendid library, which contains more than a half million volumes. Among these is a remarkable collection of bibles, representing eight thousand editions in over one hundred languages. There are the usual museums and galleries to be found in a German city of a quarter of a million people and many fine monuments and memorials grace the streets and parks. The population is largely Protestant, which probably accounts for the absence of a church of the first magnitude. We stop at the old-fashioned Marquardt Hotel, which proves very good and moderate in rates.