‘I Felt as Never Before,Under Any Sermon That I Ever Heard Preached’: Word,Image,and the Oberammergau Passion Play,1840–1900

In the 1840s and 1850s, accounts of the Oberammergau Passion Play began to appear in England and the United States. By the turn of the century, the production had become a tourist attraction for the wealthy and a frequent subject of books and articles for the middle classes. Writers suggested that the play's spectacle represented Christ's Passion more accurately and powerfully than any spoken sermon or written gospel could, establishing Oberammergau as an important religious as well as aesthetic pilgrimage site. Extending their privileging of spectacle over the written word, writers emphasised in turn the inadequacy of their own descriptions, reminding those who could not afford to travel to Oberammergau that published accounts could never accurately represent the experience of witnessing the play. Readers who had not seen the production were at once reminded of their economic and religious disadvantages as the play grew in fame.