A few months ago, H found a gorgeous hard-bound programme documenting and profiling the Oberammergau Passion Play of 1910, and later I spied a copy of the booklet from the 1922 performance. The tradition of staging an extravagant passion play that everyone in the community takes part in dates back to 1633, when blighted by plague and failing crops, village elders pledged to commit to such a spectacle once a decade, should the villagers be spared.
That tradition has continued, this notable delays, ever since—most recently in 2010. The two programmes may have been printed as keepsakes for different audiences and it really does not matter about the poshness of the leaflets, though the bound edition with photographs and illustrations is very different from the other, text only on whitey-brown paper—just that
the show does go on, but after looking at the two together and wondering about the twelve year span, it was fascinating to compare the decades of each performance and the changing times.
The 1900s saw much upheaval with the last days of colonization—with Cuba and the Philippines becoming independent from the US, the home-rule moves of Ireland and Norway, assassinations and conflicts, the discovery of radiation, the pioneering of powered, and the first time practical availability of products like automobiles, cameras, typewriters, gramophones and recorded music. The next presentation came, postponed due to the end of the war and unsteady peace that followed, with a very much transformed backdrop—not played to an audience subject to the German Empire but rather before a new Republic.
Stemming from the outbreak of war that dissolved most monarchies and empires, the aftermath hosted revolutions in Russia and China and the pandemic outbreak of the Spanish Flu that illustrated for the first time how the deployment and displacement of millions can spread disease. Aside from infernal engines and motion pictures, however, there was not the social engineering that occurred previously with the dissemination of the way people moved and communicated. It is as if, unable to fully digest what mobility and voice (in the form of
suffrage too) for the public would mean, the dynasties themselves revolted terribly, and the season’s
run for the Passion Play was witness to the whole awful mutiny being set in motion again. One can also see the transition from an Art Nouveau to an Art Déco style with the cover designs. I wonder if there are other such time-capsules, intersections between promise and custom and contemporary influences (not quite the same as ephemera nor like the regular business of historians either), and how such treasures are researched and held in regard.
That tradition has continued, this notable delays, ever since—most recently in 2010. The two programmes may have been printed as keepsakes for different audiences and it really does not matter about the poshness of the leaflets, though the bound edition with photographs and illustrations is very different from the other, text only on whitey-brown paper—just that the show does go on, but after looking at the two together and wondering about the twelve year span, it was fascinating to compare the decades of each performance and the changing times. 
The 1900s saw much upheaval with the last days of colonization—with Cuba and the Philippines becoming independent from the US, the home-rule moves of Ireland and Norway, assassinations and conflicts, the discovery of radiation, the pioneering of powered, and the first time practical availability of products like automobiles, cameras, typewriters, gramophones and recorded music. The next presentation came, postponed due to the end of the war and unsteady peace that followed, with a very much transformed backdrop—not played to an audience subject to the German Empire but rather before a new Republic. 
Stemming from the outbreak of war that dissolved most monarchies and empires, the aftermath hosted revolutions in Russia and China and the pandemic outbreak of the Spanish Flu that illustrated for the first time how the deployment and displacement of millions can spread disease. Aside from infernal engines and motion pictures, however, there was not the social engineering that occurred previously with the dissemination of the way people moved and communicated. It is as if, unable to fully digest what mobility and voice (in the form of suffrage too) for the public would mean, the dynasties themselves revolted terribly, and the season’s 
run for the Passion Play was witness to the whole awful mutiny being set in motion again. One can also see the transition from an Art Nouveau to an Art Déco style with the cover designs. I wonder if there are other such time-capsules, intersections between promise and custom and contemporary influences (not quite the same as ephemera nor like the regular business of historians either), and how such treasures are researched and held in regard.
