Passion Play Based on Anti-semitic Text to Be Presented in Germany

The newly-elected Town Council of Oberammergau, West Germany intends to present its famous Passion Play in 1980 based on a much-criticized anti-Semitic text that has been produced for more than a century, despite a decision by the previous Council last February to proceed with plans for a different version. This follows an election last month in which the play was the central issue. Supporters of the existing text were elected by a majority of 12 to 5 seats with 75 percent of the votes.

Mayor Ernst Zwink said in a newspaper interview that the Council would “not allow itself to be dictated to from outside” and would “reverse the February decision at all costs.” However the Council is still being apposed by a group of about 400 supporters of the other script written in 1750 by a Benedictine monk, Ferdinand Rosner. The text the new Council plans to use was written in 1860 by a priest named Joseph Alois Daisenberger which blames the Jewish people for the death of Jesus. The Rosner script maintains that all mankind was responsible. The pro-Rosner group, which includes the play’s director, Hans Schwaighofer, and most of the leading players previously chosen to appear in 1980, is determined to press ahead with its aim of reforming the play by then.

SEES MOVE AS A DANGEROUS SIGNAL

Meanwhile, in a television interview here, Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, director of the Department of Religious Affairs of the American Jewish Committee warned that not only Jews but millions of American Christians would “vote with their feet” by boycotting Oberammergau should it go ahead with the Daisenberger text. Such a decision by Oberammergau would also be “a signal to the world that the Federal German Republic is not in a position to defeat the dark powers–the ultra-conservatives and reactionaries–who seek a return to traditions of the Middle Ages,” he added.

The AJCommittee had been seeking a revision of the play since it had found the Daisenberger script anti-Semitic after a line-by-line analysis more than 20 years ago. The decision by the old Council to use the Rosner script was welcomed in February by representatives of the AJCommittee, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Council of Churches of Christ at a press conference in New York.