The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We will take the liberty of showing you Christmas plays from ancient folklore today. The two plays that we are presenting here were found by Karl Julius Schröer in the 1850s in the German-speaking enclaves in Hungary, in the area north of the Danube and west of Bratislava. Germans immigrated to these areas at the end of the Middle Ages and even a little later. Among other cultural possessions that they owned in their simplicity, they also brought these Christmas plays with them to their new homes.

Karl Julius Schröer, with whom I talked a lot about these things in my youth, who was able to tell me from his personal experiences how, in turn, in his youth - in the forties and fifties of the last century - among these, I would say Slavic and Magyar populations, these Christmas plays were always performed by the devious Germans living there, and they really had an extraordinarily serious effect on the minds of these people around Christmas time, with great zeal.

In these Christmas plays, we therefore have germs that have gradually developed from a longer cultural tradition that we can trace back to the 13th century. So that until the last decades of the 12th century, the need arose to present to the people, in a dramatic way, what refers to the biblical story, what refers to the Christian traditions, namely also to the Christian legend, throughout the widest areas of Central Europe – through Thuringia to the Rhine and across the Rhine to Alsace, then through all of southern Germany, through northern Switzerland.

It can be said that much of modern drama is based on these mystery plays – that is what they are called, after all.

Initially, these plays were linked to church services. When Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, Corpus Christi and many other holy festivals approached, people gathered in the church. The church itself was decorated in the most diverse ways. And in the 12th and 13th centuries, the clergy themselves performed, initially in Latin, what was contained within the Christian tradition, within the Gospel story.

So we can easily trace back how, for example, the scene at Christ's tomb was dramatically depicted. Three priests dressed as women: the three women who came to the tomb; an angel sitting on the tomb that had just been left. What the Gospels tell us, what tradition has preserved, was dramatically depicted.

But people also gradually began to present the things that were initially presented in Latin in the vernacular. And in the 14th century we already see very elaborate dramatic presentations, for example of the story of the wise and foolish virgins.

We know that in 1322 in Thuringia, at the foot of the Wartburg, in Eisenach, in the house “die Rolle”, a play about the wise and foolish virgins was performed that was so significant in the fate of a person that the landgrave Frederick, who was present, who has the remarkable epithet, “with the bitten cheek,” that the landgrave Frederick with the bitten cheek had a stroke from it and even died in 1323 as a result of this impression.

But not everyone felt the same way; rather, it was precisely what was presented by such performances that was extraordinarily solemn in those times. For a long time, the dramatic representation that was given in Eisenach and made such a great impression was lost. The play was later rediscovered, curiously in Mulhouse in Alsace, at Tegernsee and in a monastery in Benediktbeuern, so that one can see, precisely from this appearance at Tegernsee, that these things actually moved from the south to the north.

We then very soon find that it is no longer only clergy who present these things, but that these things have been taken up by the people and become very dear to the people. The people were extremely fond of them. We see what has been carried out. We can still see this in one piece of writing that has been preserved. We learn from this writing that in the 15th century the entire story of Christ Jesus on earth was performed: from the wedding at Cana in Galilee to the resurrection. And everywhere we see that the most effective moments, the moments that were most effective for the external view, were emphasized in an extraordinarily dramatic and spiritual way, always the things that the people themselves experienced in these performances. And we may assume that in the 15th century, at the end of the 16th century and for a large part of the German-speaking areas, these folk plays were performed at Christmas time, at Easter time, at Whitsun, on Corpus Christi and at other festivals.

One of the Christmas plays is a “Paradeis” play, which was more closely associated with the Advent season; the other is a direct Christian shepherd play, which we are presenting here before you. As you will see from the introduction to the second play, it was performed throughout the Rhine region, and these plays were also performed on the road. Nevertheless, as Schröer found them, they came, as I said, to the Oberufer, to the Pressburg area – as they are also called Oberufer Christmas plays – for performance, east of Pressburg. So they were performed there during the Christmas season, even though they originated quite elsewhere. Originally they were performed where the Rhine flows through. They were taken along by a community that had migrated eastwards and settled east of the Danube in Banat and so on. There these plays were continued until well into the 19th century. In recent times, many such treasures of the people were lost due to the events of the time, which became quite different. But those who still saw the plays were deeply moved, not only by the play itself, but especially by the way in which these plays were introduced.

When the grape harvest was over, in the fall, the clergyman and a few others, the local teacher, gathered the young men they thought capable of staging such a Christmas play. For many weeks, the exercises, the preliminary exercises, were practiced. And from the way in which people had to prepare for the solemnity of these plays, one can see the spirit in which such things were undertaken. There lived, I might say, an inwardly cozy Christianity, an inwardly cozy Christianity. One sees it in the whole way of introducing such plays. There were definite rules according to which these plays were prepared for many weeks. The clergyman or the teacher gathered the boys together. As a rule, the female roles were also performed by boys; we cannot imitate that here. Our female members would protest too much against that, but in the Oberufer area, where Karl Julius Schröer discovered these things, it was definitely boys who also performed the female roles. These youths were given strict rules. Rules were made that are now, as we have been trying to revive these plays within our circles for years, for those of our honored listeners who wish to attend. These rules no longer have the same significance for our performers, but they show us how seriously these things were taken. For example, one of the rules was that those who were to participate in the play had to lead honorable lives for the many weeks, especially evening after evening for all those weeks, while they were going through these rehearsals. Well, it goes without saying that our people always lead honorable lives! So this rule has no further significance for us. Furthermore, no mischief was allowed. That should not be the rule among anthroposophists. However, there was also a regulation, a kind of punishment, which we are not introducing here simply because there would be too much protest against it, and if it were necessary to demand it, it would not be adhered to. It was a strict rule that for every memory lapse that occurred during the dress rehearsal and especially during the performances themselves, strict penalties had to be paid by the fellow player! As I said, we cannot introduce that. Because these penalties would never be paid by us.

But now there was one very strict regulation, ladies and gentlemen, that we cannot introduce at all. This strict regulation was that during the rehearsals, the rehearsers had to be strictly obedient to the clergyman or teacher, that is, to everyone who had to be a teacher. Well, you will understand that we can never introduce that among ourselves, of course. But you can see from these strict paragraphs how extraordinarily seriously this matter was taken. And it is this seriousness that strikes you when you delve into the whole way in which these plays were performed. Not sentimentally, often interspersed with a delightful sense of humor, these things were originally given by the clergy out of their sense of the people, but the people took hold of them and absorbed them completely in their spirit. So that, as they are presented here, they are thoroughly folksy and take us back to the feelings, the perceptions, the thoughts of a part of Christian society in the 16th century, perhaps still in the 15th century. All this comes to mind when we look at these plays.

We may imagine that over a large part of Central Europe, over the areas I mentioned earlier, from the 14th century into the following centuries – in some areas, as you can see, this only gradually disappeared in the 19th century – at all so-called holy times these plays, that is, the Christmas play, the Easter play, the Whitsun play, were performed. And the way in which these people have brought Christianity to life within them, how they present the Gospels to us in an extraordinarily vivid and popular way, shows that they have made a deep impact on the people. And we also consider it our task to draw attention to how the spiritual life has been preserved through the centuries, and how a part of the spiritual life of Central Europe has been preserved. Those who have seen how this spiritual life of Central Europe, insofar as it was folk life, gradually died out in the second half of the 19th century, will be able to feel a lot through this resurrection of old folk times. It is in this spirit, ladies and gentlemen, that we would like to present the Paradeis play to you today, followed by the Christ-Birth play.

The two Christmas plays to be performed today were performed in the same way as they have been performed over the centuries until the mid-19th century in the German-speaking communities in Hungary, a little east of Pressburg and north of the Danube, in the area known as Oberufer. At that time, Hungary was thoroughly permeated by German colonists in these areas, both north of the Danube, past the Carpathians and south of it into Transylvania, thus across the Spiš region, then again towards Banat, the area of its west, who had been immigrating to Hungary from the west for several centuries, taking their cultural treasures with them. And these plays are probably the most valuable of these cultural treasures. These plays take us back to the 11th century. They originated from the impulse of that which takes place in the churches and has an effect on folklore, the content of the sacred legends, the content of the Bible, in a dramatic way.

Originally, it was really like that, as it was in Greece, where all the drama emerged from the Dionysus plays. It was similar in the Middle Ages from the 10th and 11th centuries onwards. They decorated the altar and the rest of the church. At first, it was clergy who performed these plays. We find as far back as the 11th century three clergymen dressed as women performing the scene at Christ's tomb in the church itself, after the death had occurred. Two of the priests portrayed the women who had come to the tomb, the third the angel. This is basically one of the oldest motifs, and these things originated from such biblical motifs. We then find, for example, that a very frequently performed play was one that presented three consecutive scenes: the women's walk to the tomb of Christ, the Savior's conversation with Magdalene, and then a chorus of the women and disciples as the third part.

These things were developed more and more. At the beginning of the 14th century, for example, we find that in most areas of Central Europe, quite large and significant plays were sometimes performed at Christian festivals. We are told, for example, how on April 24, 1322, in Thuringia, at the foot of the Wartburg, in the house “die Rolle”, a play was performed by the ten virgins, the wise and the foolish virgins , and the entire period that followed is recorded in reports that have been left over, which describe the extraordinarily impressive nature of this performance of Sunday Misericordiae, on April 24, 1322. Indeed, the impressive nature of the performance is described in a very real way. One of the participants in this play was Landgrave Frederick, who bore the curious epithet “with the bitten cheek”; this Frederick, who was apparently somewhat weak when he participated in this play of the wise and foolish virgins, was so moved that he was struck down by a stroke and lived for barely two more years, dying in 1323. This play was then found in Mulhouse, has now also been printed and is one of the most interesting monuments of dramatic art that has emerged from the church, that is, from the sacred action that has gradually been transformed into perception.

We then have a very interesting play from a somewhat later period, which even has about 1340 verses and which has been preserved in a St. Gallen manuscript. It contains the entire Holy History from the Wedding at Cana in Galilee to the Resurrection, and in an extraordinarily impressive way, in that the scenes where Christ is active as a teacher are emphasized throughout. And the way in which the scenes were staged seems to reveal an extraordinarily skillful dramatic plot. The process was so well presented that at first only a few scenes were shown in a very dramatic way, interspersed with narration and pantomime. So when we go back to the 12th or 13th century, the presentation is such that something particularly gripping is presented, then pantomime follows and then there is narration again. But gradually this way of presenting things moved completely into the dramatic. You can also see how things from the church gradually grew into the profane. The oldest pieces that have been preserved were written in Latin. Then only the headings and individual sentences were in Latin, the text in the vernacular, and then gradually, as we move into the 15th and 16th centuries, the pieces are written entirely in the vernacular, and they also penetrate from the church outwards.

The plays that are presented to you today were performed in the vicinity of Pressburg, especially in the vicinity of the Oberufer region, in the inns, so the matter gradually penetrated from the church into the people. We see how, with tremendous seriousness, what could be felt and sensed by the people through the Christ impulse lives in these plays. Later on, one sees how more and more traditions that are not in the Bible but that are present in tradition are incorporated into these pieces in the secular legend. The plays were performed not only at Christmas but also at Easter, at Pentecost, at Corpus Christi, in some areas at the feast of St. Rosalie and so on, but they always followed what the church calendar offered. It can be seen everywhere how the sentiments from the Holy History, which run according to the course of the year, are also contained in these pieces, so that we have received a wonderful piece of genuine folk culture through which we can see back into the centuries of spiritual life, as it was in Central Europe and then taken over to the East. We still have such a wonderful piece of folk culture in it.

In the later pieces, we must particularly admire the fact that, on the one hand, a real seriousness, a great seriousness and a truly Christian attitude live in the pieces, but that they are not sentimental at all. To interpret such pieces sentimentally in the performance would be a completely erroneous note, because in the people, even in the most sacred, a healthy sense of humor always plays a role. And one can say: it is precisely in this that the true seriousness is expressed, that the people did not become sentimentally untrue, but brought their humor into it, and yet also expressed the full seriousness of the sacred story.

These two pieces also come from this tradition. They must have originated in completely different areas than the one in which they were last found, because in the introduction to the second piece we will hear how reference is made to the sea and the Rhine; the sea, which could be Lake Constance, and the Rhine, which in any case does not flow in the Bratislava area. So these plays originally came from the west and were brought to Hungary by German colonists migrating east, where they then continued to be performed. And Karl Julius Schröer, who saw the plays performed and wrote them down in his book “Deutsche Weihnachtspiele aus Ungarn” (German Christmas Plays from Hungary), after listening to those who performed them and they remembered for the performance, listened to and wrote down, not copied from somewhere, but written down according to the wording, because the people held these pieces in extremely high esteem and kept them safe. There have always been a few respected families within the village, in most villages even only one, who kept the manuscript. It was always passed down from father to son. And when Christmas time approached, when the grape harvest was over in the fall, the person who had the manuscript would gather together with the clergy, the local pastor, those boys whom he considered suitable to perform the play that year. The female roles were also performed by boys, something that we cannot imitate here, although we try very hard to stay in the style of the performance, because our women would remonstrate too much if we only had the plays performed by men. It would not be possible to do such a thing in our country. But otherwise we do indeed remain in the style that has been preserved into the 19th century.

In my youth, I talked a lot about these things with my revered teacher, Karl Julius Schröer, who was completely immersed in these matters. We talked a lot about the way these plays were performed, and it is quite possible, even though we work under completely different conditions, not in a rural inn or the like and not with the direct participation of the entire population, as it was there, it is still possible to stay in the style approximately. The seriousness with which these people approached the matter could be seen from the fact that strict rules were in place regarding how the people who took part in the performance as actors should live. From the moment they began rehearsals after the grape harvest, they practiced the whole week. From the grape harvest until Christmas, when the performance took place, strict rules were given by their teacher, pastor, teacher and by the master who had the piece. Such rules, which extended to the whole life of these boys, show how seriously the matter was undertaken. We hear, for example, that the people who were to participate had to fulfill one condition. We do not need to prescribe this because it goes without saying that anthroposophists lead honorable lives, but this does not always seem to have been the case with the local boys. So the strict rule was given: the boys must lead honorable lives the whole time while the rehearsals are taking place.

The second condition that had to be observed was this: they must not sing any roguish songs during the entire time. Now, I have never heard anthroposophists sing roguish songs, so this condition does not apply to our fellow players! However, we cannot fulfill the third condition, which was set by the teachers for the local boys. That is that they must obey their teachers in the strictest way while the rehearsals are taking place. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that is not feasible for us! So such a regulation would not help us at all. Nor could a regulation be enforced that stipulates that penalties must be imposed for every memory error, because, firstly, our people claim that they do not make any memory mistakes, and, secondly, they would never pay a penalty!

But you can see from these strict conditions that the matter was taken extremely seriously. It is truly a wonderful Christian life that has been preserved. Under modern conditions, these things are also being completely lost. For years, we have considered it one of our tasks to present such things, which lead more than any theoretical historical reflection into the life of the past, in turn vividly to the minds of the present, and we believe that it is really possible in this way to show how Christianity from the 11th to the 19th century lived in numerous minds in Central Europe, far to the south. We believe that it can be shown how Christian sentiment was present in the hearts of these people, and that what they achieved and showed in such plays at all times of the year was an expression of their Christian sentiment.

We will take the liberty of presenting to you in the next few days some German Christmas plays that have been preserved from older folklore. Today we will begin by presenting a so-called Paradeis play. These Christmas plays are deeply rooted in Central European-German folklore and, when viewed today, are actually a living historical representation. The revival of these plays gives us a much more vivid picture of the development of the people than any other historical account. In Europe, drama originated from church performances. We can trace such church performances historically quite far back, to the 12th century; but they actually go back much further. From the 12th century, there are reports of a frequently performed ecclesiastical drama called “The Antichrist”; this “Antichrist” existed in the most diverse forms. And it is extraordinarily remarkable to see how magnificent struggles were depicted in this “Antichrist”, which took place between the European and Asian peoples.

Later, the suffering and birth of Christ and other church memories were first presented by clergymen in the churches themselves. They then became secular events, with the clergymen first performing these sacred plays outside the church, and then the performances were also taken over by secular persons.

One particularly noteworthy play, for example, was that of the “Ten Virgins”. A performance of the “Ten Virgins” that took place in Eisenach in 1322, at the foot of the Wartburg, was so moving that the present Landgrave Frederick “with the bitten cheek” was disconsolate that, as this play stated, it was not possible for even the Holy Virgin to redeem the exiles through her intercession. The powerful impression made on him by this play with this tendency struck him down. He wasted away and died as a result of the impression made on him by this play of the “Ten Virgins.” This story is told a great deal throughout the Middle Ages that followed. In short, we find traces of such sacred plays throughout Central Europe,

These spiritual plays, which then became popular, appear to us in the following centuries in the most varied forms as festival plays, Christmas plays, Easter plays or carnival plays. It is particularly interesting to note how we can follow the migrating German tribes taking these plays with them on their wanderings.

We must be clear about the fact that more German tribes living in the west of Central Europe, who then moved eastwards, to Austria, populated the Bohemian regions, but especially Hungary, took their plays with them as a precious, sacred possession and performed these plays in an extraordinarily remarkable way. These plays lived on in the people without the educated classes taking much notice of them. It was only when German studies of antiquity gained a certain depth in the 19th century that individual scholars of antiquity began to perform these plays based on popular tradition. One of those who went to great lengths to track down such folk traditions in the most diverse German areas of Hungary was my old friend and former teacher Karl Julius Schröer. It is thanks to him that the German Christmas plays, especially from the Pressburg area, have been preserved, at least in writing. Karl Julius Schröer found these Christmas plays in northwestern Hungary, in the Pressburg area, in the so-called Oberufer area. These Christmas plays showed, through their content and language, that they had been brought from more western areas by German tribes migrating east. Schröer was able to establish that such Christmas plays were handed down from generation to generation like a sacred treasure, rehearsed each time the Christmas season approached, and then performed at Christmas time. These Christmas plays were in the possession of one particularly favored family. When the grape harvest was over in the fall and the country folk had some free time, the owner of the manuscript of such Christmas plays would gather the local boys he thought suitable and prepare them for performance at Christmas time by rehearsing them.

There was something very special about such performances; they were treated as having a deeply religious side. This is evident from the strict rules that existed for those who had rehearsed these plays for many weeks under the direction of the master. Such rules were, for example, that those boys who were chosen to study and perform this Christmas play had to show unconditional obedience to their master in an extraordinary way during the time of rehearsals; that they had to lead a moral life during this time. The special rule was that during this time they were not allowed to go to the Dirndl, as the vernacular put it. When the Christmas plays were rehearsed, they were usually performed in an inn, and in a truly folksy way. As best as possible today, we want to capture this folksy quality in our performance, so that, in a sense, the way Christmas was celebrated within this tradition can come to life before our eyes.

A special feature of these plays was their use of folksy humor. And it is quite wrong to perform these folk plays sentimentally. All sentimentality must be avoided. If you perform them sentimentally, you simply show that you have no understanding for an element that was particularly present in the religious life of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern times. People could be deeply religious, but they were so in a humorous way, without false mysticism, without sentimentality. And they could tell genuinely folksy jokes and display genuinely folksy humor between descriptions of the most exalted scenes. People did not want to unlearn how to laugh by looking up to the most exalted things in prayer. This is characteristic of the special religiosity of earlier times, which was healthy in this respect. It was only in later times that religiosity became unhealthy.

Today we will take the liberty of presenting the play that usually preceded the others: the Paradeis play, depicting how God leads Adam and Eve into paradise and how they are tempted by the devil. “Adam and Eve” is the festival that precedes December 25th in the calendar, the actual Christmas. And for the Christmas season, which was later the Christmas season, something like the Christ-Birth Play, which we will allow ourselves to do tomorrow, was usually planned for the Christmas season, followed by this Paradise Play.

In this performance, the text of the introduction to the “Paradeis-Spiel” reconstructed by Rudolf Steiner was spoken for the first time. - No transcripts are available of the performances on December 25 and 26.

This Epiphany play ¹ belongs to the series of Christian festivals that my old teacher and friend Karl Julius Schröer found in the Oberufer region, in western Hungary, near Pressburg, about seventy years ago. In this Oberufer region in Hungary, there are scattered German villages, especially in Slavic areas; villages that still had a rich use of the German language around the mid-19th century. The German tribes that settled there belonged to the Saxon tribes, the same tribes as those who live on the southern edge of the Carpathians, in the Spiš region, and who also live in Transylvania. Other German tribes are the Swabian tribes, who live more in the Banat. These are the German tribes that probably moved from western areas of Central Europe, even from areas on the Rhine, from the Siebengebirge, even further east during the 15th and 16th centuries, and settled as colonists in the Hungarian areas. However, in the second half of the 19th century, these areas were forcibly Magyarized, and most of the German element was lost, along with such folk traditions as these Christmas plays, the Epiphany play, and so on.

These plays take us back to the times when Christian pageants spread throughout all of western and southern Germany, and also over a large part of Switzerland. We can trace these pageants back to the 11th, even the 10th, century. The oldest forms are performed in the churches, at Christmas, where the manger has been set up, and where the clergy themselves - initially in Latin - have performed this festival. For the concepts of the time, this performance in Latin was no more disturbing than the reading of the Latin mass is for Catholicism today. Later on, you come across such festivals, which have the Holy History, the birth of Christ, the appearance of the shepherds, the three wise men and so on as their subject, but then in the local language and in fact in the dialect, only interspersed with Latin expressions. Later, they were also performed by lay people, no longer by clergy, and migrated from the church to other public places, especially in inns, where they were then performed by lay people. Such festivals were taken by the tribes migrating from west to east, these colonists, and they really revered them like a shrine.

When the grape harvest was over in the fall, the person who had the manuscripts of these plays – usually a member of a well-respected village family – gathered the young men of the village. Women were not allowed to participate, not even as actors. He gathered together the local youths he considered suitable and spent months rehearsing the pageant with them in the run-up to Christmas. The entire production was an extraordinarily solemn affair. The teacher had written strict rules and handed them out to the youths, and everyone had to comply with them. For example, they had to abstain from drinking during the entire period, as emphasized in these regulations; they had to lead a moral life; and they had to fulfill similar regulations that meant something extraordinary, especially within the village community. So the approach of these festivities was really looked forward to in a festive mood. And when the performances came around at Christmas and on Epiphany, the villagers would gather in the appropriate inns. The benches were placed against the wall and the play was performed in the middle of the hall.

We have tried, as far as our circumstances allow, to imitate the way the performance took place within the folklore. Of course, not everything can be imitated, especially not the arrangement as it was in the inn; we choose the stage-like arrangement. But in everything else, we have tried to follow tradition as far as possible, in order to present the plays to today's audience in such a way that they can get an idea of how such festivals were performed.

Another thing I would particularly like to emphasize is that in these plays we can see how a truly pious mood, a solemn mood devoted to the Holy Story, is everywhere combined with humor. The devil, for example, is everywhere the evil enemy of mankind, but at the same time he is a funny character. And in a similar way, healthy humor, a healthy folk humor, plays into the solemn, religious mood. This is what must be emphasized, because this is precisely what was present in the popular piety of these areas, and it was preserved in the German colonists of Hungary until the 19th century in such a way that there was no sentimentality in this religious popular sentiment, but rather a naive originality that allowed even the most sublime things to be mixed up with humor.

During these festival performances, we have something that brings to life times that have now passed for centuries in a much more vivid and lively way than ever before. The 15th and 16th centuries are brought back to us. So we must try to preserve the dialect in an appropriate way, and, as well as we can, try to reproduce these plays in the dialect in which they were performed in the 19th century in the German-speaking areas of Hungary. Precisely because a piece of intellectual life from an earlier time can be brought back to the attention of those currently living, we make it our special task within the Anthroposophical Society to bring these plays to the public.

Later, many such Christmas plays were also collected from other regions. They were then collected, for example, in Silesia, where Weinhold did an enormous amount of work in this regard; but they were also collected in the Palatinate region. And it was so remarkable that the basic character and content is essentially the same in all these plays; they only differ in dialect, so that one can see that this is common spiritual property from the second half of the Middle Ages, which extends into our present time. And perhaps it is justified to present it to contemporary humanity in the way we do, because this folk heritage is disappearing. Within the village community, of course, the mood no longer exists to cultivate this folk heritage in the same way as before. But Karl Julius Schröer, who collected these things in the 1940s and 1950s, often told me what a profound impression this resurrection of ancient folk customs, performed by the farmers who owned these pieces, made on him. That is what prompted me to suggest years ago that these plays be performed within our society for a wider audience. And it was on the basis of this suggestion that we performed the Christmas Play and the Paradeis Play in the past few days, and today we would like to present the Epiphany Play or Herod Play to you, as it was performed in the 1950s by German colonists in the areas around Bratislava.

• 1. The introductory words to the performance of the Paradeis-Spiel and the ChristGeburt-Spiel on 4 January 1922 are not available in a transcription.

As we have done for many years, we would like to present a Christmas play to you this year, a folk play that takes us back to a dramatic-political time of the people, a play that has been cultivated long before the modern work of the stage and stage acting arose within Europe, in the newer Europe at all.

The plays that are performed here with us – the Adam and Eve play, which was performed yesterday ¹ and will be performed again in the next few days, and today's play, the Christ-Birth-Play, and the play that will also be performed in the next few days, the Epiphany Play – I first became acquainted with these plays almost forty years ago through my long-dead friend and teacher, Schröer. Karl Julius Schröer was a personality who, in the second half of the 19th century, made a very special contribution to the study of those German dialects that belong to the German colonists who once – probably as early as the 16th century, but certainly in the 17th century – from areas that are are not so far from us here, from southern Germany and perhaps northern Switzerland, to the east; German colonists who settled in western Hungary, in northern and southern western Hungary, and then also in northern Hungary, south of the Carpathians, and in other areas of Hungary.

Karl Julius Schröer traveled to all of these areas and studied the various dialects in the most diverse ways. It was the case that the essence of the people was already in decline even back then; other ethnic groups took in these peoples and absorbed them. They are extraordinarily interesting and beautiful books, which appeared in the guise of a dictionary, but which are nevertheless extraordinarily interesting for anyone who wants to study them. These books are written in the language that, as I said, originated in the western German regions not far from us and was then carried eastward to the Danube and the Carpathians by colonists.

Karl Julius Schröer found these Christmas plays, which we are performing here, among these people in the 1850s; he got to know them there. These Christmas plays probably originated in the 16th century or even earlier among the people when they still lived more in western Germany, as far as the Rhine. We can still see this from certain sentences in the plays themselves. When they had to emigrate, they were taken with them by the people and were performed again and again every year in the colonists' land, in Hungary. The plays listed here were performed every year by the Haidbauern, a group of farmers who live near Bratislava, in what is now Czechoslovakia, and who have long preserved the original style of their ancient folk traditions. These plays were performed there every year in the dialect that these people brought with them from the west to the east.

These folk plays have been preserved in a more genuine form among these colonists than in other areas where similar plays were also performed. For those who have separated from the tribe of their folklore and have gone abroad have truly preserved such things as a sacred treasure. Among the poor people of Oberufer and the neighboring areas on the Hungarian Danube island of Schütt, for example, it was the case that in a particularly respected family, copies of these plays were passed down from father to son and from son to grandson. The one who was allowed to preserve these plays was usually also the one who had received the oral tradition of how to play them from his ancestors. He was the so-called teacher. He might gather, with an assistant, in the fall, after the grape harvest was over, those local boys whom he considered suitable to perform the plays. Only young men were used for this; a practice we cannot imitate. These young men were entrusted with something serious during this time. Above all, they had to lead an extraordinary, moral life and had to live peacefully with the other villagers during the whole period from the grape harvest to Advent. Only then were they considered worthy to actually participate in the plays that were performed from Advent to Epiphany.

In these plays, the people expressed what was right for their views, for their aesthetic enjoyment, I would say. But at the same time, these plays were - their subjects are taken from the most important parts of biblical history, the most important for the people - an expression of the people's deepest piety. That is why, for example, during the entire period in which the plays were practiced, no music was allowed to be performed in the village that was different from the music that belonged to the plays. And it has been handed down to us that when some traveling players came to a village, they had the village musicians play in their honor. They were quite indignant: Do they think we are comedians that this music offends us? They regarded the performance of such plays as something quite serious.

Then, when Advent and later Christmas time had arrived, these plays were performed in an inn. The people, however, actually carried their pious, truly pious minds, their holy mood, I would like to say, into this inn. These plays have a genuinely folksy character in that, firstly, they are part of the broad development of European theater. You can see this in the after-effects of the images, because these are always interspersed in the action of the plays. You can see how the theater tradition from ancient Greece has continued in these simple folk plays.

But there is something else that is much, much more important. It is this: that between the most tender, genuine scenes of devotion, there are always interposed scenes of the people engaged in robust fun. This is precisely what is peculiar about these pieces, juxtaposed as they are, for example, with the figure of the Virgin Mary, who is portrayed with extraordinary delicacy and marked with wonderfully pious devotion, and the somewhat clumsy Joseph. The scene where the shepherds exchange funny jokes with one another in the field, and so on, is not particularly delicately depicted in the scene where, for example, the shepherds sacrifice to the child Jesus, in addition to the touching, pious, holy scene. But this shows us how those whose names have not been preserved, who created these plays out of genuine popular sentiment, knew the true, honest piety of the people, which never became sentimental. It was honest precisely when it did not fall into dishonest sentimentality, when laughter and rough jokes could be tolerated at the same time. And in a beautiful way, those who created such plays knew how to shape the coarse folk fun into something that, I would say, wants to reach heaven in a tender, pious worship.

As I said, Karl Julius Schröer still saw these plays performed by the farmers of the Haiddörfer in the 1950s. It was at that time, especially around Christmas time, that I heard about these folk plays from him. He spoke with tremendous inner devotion, because he loved everything that was folksy, and there was something in his words of a reflection of the consecration that the farmers associated with these plays.

He then gave me the little book in which he had followed these plays in the 1960s, and I was able to have many a conversation with him afterwards, in which he carefully pointed out the way in which the dialect was used, the way in which the language was formed in a rural, artistic way, one could say. So we were able to talk about gestures, about the whole structure of the play. It was truly a revelation of genuine folk art; at the time, it really grew quite close to my heart. And when we were able to perform such a play within the Anthroposophical Society many years ago, it was my particular endeavor to always perform these plays at Christmas time, as far as it was possible with the means used, which were available for a stage, so that an image was given of what the people had in ancient times and what they still had in certain areas until recently.

Now these plays have been largely lost. We were allowed to perform the plays even during the war. Friends of ours were allowed to perform them in the military hospitals and to bring joy and satisfaction to the sick with these plays during the terrible war. We have also been performing them here in Dornach for years and will try to do so again this year, so that a real picture is created of the religious content and the folk-artistic striving at the same time.

The content of the performances, ladies and gentlemen, has been handed down from father to son and grandson, and as Karl Julius Schröer recorded it after hearing it, as he recorded it according to what the other performers told him. I only took the liberty of adding something that was not part of the tradition in one instance. You were able to see it yesterday in the Paradise play, and you will see it again when the Paradise play is performed, but I am firmly convinced that this piece was present, and it can only be a matter of of the spirit that lived in the folk at that time, so that a tradition that was already there at the time, that was already present, I would say, in black and white, and only got lost, has now become necessary on the stage. By staging these plays, we are trying to give a true picture of what has been revived in many areas as folklore in the 16th century from the 11th century and what has been most faithfully preserved by the poor people who were then in the process of losing their folklore, a folklore that Karl Julius Schröer wanted to preserve by recording it in dictionaries, books of spoken drama, and by passing it on to us in these Christmas plays.

Many of these Christmas plays have also been collected by others, but it seems to me that these plays of the Haidbauern are the ones in which what once existed in the late Middle Ages has been preserved most purely.

• 1. On December 23, 1922, two performances of the Paradeis play took place at 5:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., but there are no transcripts are available.

after the fire at the Goetheanum on New Year's Eve 1922/23, before the Epiphany play

My dear friends! Great pain knows how to remain silent about what it feels. And so you will understand me when I say just a few words to you before we begin the Epiphany play.

The work that was created by the self-sacrificing love and devotion of numerous friends enthusiastic about our movement within ten years was destroyed in one night. Of course, today of all days, silent pain must feel how infinite love and care our friends put into this work. And that's where I'd like to leave it at first, my dear friends.

I would just like to say that now, for the work that seemed for an all-too-short time as if it could become a work of salvation, and for which, in turn, the most devoted, self-sacrificing work, even sometimes quite dangerous work, has been done by many of our friends, the most heartfelt thanks are due, which can be expressed from the spirit of our movement.

Since we start from the feeling that everything we do within our movement is a necessity within the present human civilization, we want to continue what is intended within the framework that is still left to us , and therefore, even at this hour, with the flames still burning outside, which are a source of great pain to us, we want to perform the play that was promised at the end of this course and that our course participants are counting on.

Likewise, I will give the scheduled lecture here in the carpentry shop at eight o'clock tonight. In this way, we want to express that even the misfortune that has befallen us, which cannot really be described in words, with words, should not crush us, but that our pain should instead urge us to continue to do what we see as our duty, to the extent that we are given the strength to do so.

From this point of view, my dear friends, please accept the three kings play, which we are performing, in addition to the other two Christmas plays, which are drawn from real folk tradition, even though we were of course unable to hold the right rehearsals today. You will have to take this into account, but I am sure you will also be willing to take it into account during this painful time.

I just wanted to say a few words to you before we begin our performance. It is not a showpiece that we are presenting, but rather that through which the people once rose to their most sacred being in his art. And if one considers this, it will not be found inappropriate at all to let this sacred seriousness arise before our souls, even out of the deepest pain.

There is no transcript of an address by Rudolf Steiner from the performance of the Epiphany Play on January 6, 1923.

Today we would like to present to you two plays from ancient folklore that belong to the series of plays that were often performed during festive seasons in ancient Christian folklore in the Middle Ages and in many regions.

We must be clear about the fact that from the 12th or 13th century until the last century, until the middle of the last century, the great festivals of the year - Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, and some others - were extraordinarily significant events in the year in Christian areas. And just as the Christian year is marked by everything that permeates consciousness, so at special times the human heart is virtually called upon to permeate these memories with that which in turn are the greatest facts in religious life and in religious consciousness.

There are Easter plays, Pentecost plays, Corpus Christi plays, and plays for other holy festivals. The most endearing of these festivals, the ones that most touch the soul, were the Christmas plays. These Christmas plays have been preserved for us particularly from the times when the Middle Ages were coming to an end. And the two plays that we are presenting to you today also come from the late Middle Ages. They were still being performed everywhere in the 16th century, even in the surrounding areas. As is pointed out, they were performed in the areas around here. You can see from this that these plays originally came from a region along the Rhine. But the plays that we are presenting today were not found here in these areas; they were discovered by my old teacher and friend Karl Julius Schröer in the middle of the last century in those areas of Upper Hungary that were actually still truly German at the time, but whose German character has long since faded, giving way to Slavic and Magyar elements. German colonies were scattered throughout these areas, as they were throughout Hungary. In the area around Bratislava, north of the Danube, and further over, south of the Carpathians, along the so-called Hungarian highlands to Transylvania; and again down on the lower Danube, in the so-called Banat. In the latter area, the Swabians have settled, who emigrated from Germany; in the areas of northern Hungary, in the areas from which these plays originate, we have Saxon colonists. But those who have cultivated these plays are probably even of Alemannic origin and were originally settled in the areas that comprise Alsace and are located north of the Rhine, which forms the northern border of Switzerland. These Germans emigrated and settled in the area around Pressburg, north of the Danube, the so-called Oberufer region, and brought these Christmas plays with them as a precious souvenir of their old home further west.

Every year, when Christmas approached, the Christmas plays were rehearsed in the village. Actually, they started rehearsing as soon as the grape harvest was over. Then the person who kept these Christmas plays in his family would gather the others around him; it was a well-respected family in the individual villages that had written down these plays, and again the most respected and oldest of the family was the so-called teacher. He gathered the boys around him as soon as the grape harvest was over, in October. Only boys were allowed to play at that time. He gathered the boys he found suitable, not only in an artistic sense, in a folk-artistic sense, but also in a moral and religious sense. Even while studying and preparing, the boys were required to lead particularly pious lives, so that when they performed at Christmas, they would be able to advocate in the right way for what was contained in these plays, through their whole attitude. Then they studied from week to week and it was strictly observed that everything that was around was really observed in these old plays. In fact, everything was laid down, including how each individual was to behave. After these plays had been prepared for a long time, as Christmas approached, those who had been instructed by the teacher for many weeks prepared themselves, and at Christmas time they first went around the village, then went to the inn that had been chosen for the performance. In a simple inn, and with the simplest of means, the story that you will see in today's two plays was performed. These are two examples of how the Holy Story was presented.

The first play depicts the story of the Fall of Man, the temptation of Adam and Eve. The second play shows Christ appearing to the shepherds in Bethlehem and everything that followed.

Two things, my dear audience, can be seen from these plays. Firstly, how deeply Christianity had penetrated the mind with genuine, honest piety. And on the other hand, how all sentimentality was still alien to these simple people in those days. A sentimental nature, which is always somewhat untrue, something falsely mystical, was not at all connected with this genuine, honest, popular piety.

I myself was deeply moved when I, as a very young lad, got to know these Christmas plays through my revered teacher, Karl Julius Schröer, at the end of the 1770s, beginning of the 1780s of the last century, and I then occupied myself with them a great deal. And so I would like to try to present what, in my opinion, has been celebrated with honest, elementary piety for centuries in German-speaking areas of Central Europe around Christmas time, and which was then brought as a faithful heirloom to the former German colonies in Hungary, as it was presented in those ancient times. Of course, you can't do it quite so primitively. But you have to do it as well as possible. And we do it here in such a way that you get a good idea of what it was like at Christmas in these German colonial villages. So — bringing up a piece of Christian German folklore — these Christmas plays should now appear before you in an unadulterated form.

You will see how everything is geared towards making the presentation something intimate that the entire audience - it was, after all, a simple village audience - experienced. So you will see the caroler entering to introduce the whole thing. You will see how he actually forms the bridge from the players to the audience, so that everything can have an extraordinarily affectionate, intimate and heartfelt expression. What I have said to you, which can only cause one to love these traditions from ancient folklore, has led to the fact that we, within our anthroposophical movement, have made it our task every year to perform these old folk plays, and we will do so again this year. And that is why we have invited you.

Especially in the second half of the 19th century, so much of these old things disappeared, and we should actually be grateful that a man like Karl Julius Schröer, who was a scholar in folklore, went to the teachers himself and had them tell him what the teachers or those who were fellow players had in their memories. Because they told him something that is truly centuries-old, sacred property. And so it has been preserved. Unfortunately, folklore is only present today in very isolated areas, where, by the way, attempts are being made to preserve it unadulterated. A piece of old folklore comes to life when we immerse ourselves in it, as it can be done through a presentation that is as unadulterated as possible, as we are now attempting. It is with this in mind that we kindly invite you to view this old folk tradition with us.

After the two performances of the “Paradeis-Spiel” and the “Christ-Geburt-Spiel” in Dornach on Friday, December 14, 1923, the group of actors traveled to Schaffhausen for a rehearsal on Saturday, where the two plays were performed on Sunday, December 16, 1923. Rudolf Steiner arrived on Sunday and gave a speech, of which no transcript has survived. He then traveled on to Stuttgart. Marie Steiner was in Berlin at the time. —- In the book published in 1967: Rudolf Steiner/Marie Steiner-von Sivers “Correspondence and Documents 1901-1925,” Rudolf Steiner writes several times about this guest performance in preparation.

during the Christmas Conference of the General Anthroposophical Society.

We will take the liberty of presenting you with some Christmas plays from ancient folklore. Today we will begin by presenting the Paradeis play, then tomorrow and in the next few days the Christ-Birth play and the Epiphany play. These Christmas plays come from the times when similar plays were performed throughout Europe, not only at Christmas time, but also at Easter and even at Pentecost. Such plays have been collected by German scholars, and they can be found in all sorts of publications in libraries. These plays were performed in market towns and villages well into the 19th century, but less so in the cities. But now one must say: the Christmas plays that we present to you here have a certain extraordinary, significant advantage over other such Christmas plays. The other Christmas plays that have been performed in Central Europe have actually been improved from decade to decade. The elements that were present from ancient folklore and were preserved in a wonderful way were improved by all sorts of intelligent people, and then they were performed again from decade to decade. What can become of that which really comes from ancient folklore in artistic and religious and musical terms can be seen in the caricature of the folksy in the Oberammergau Passion Plays. But in these Christmas plays that we are staging here, there is something that has actually been preserved unadulterated, as it has been performed, back to the 16th, 15th century, for the following reason.

These plays, which we are talking about here, were probably performed in Alsace, through the south of Baden and Württemberg, and probably also as far as Bavaria. You will see this from a reference in one of the plays in the next few days, where the Rhine is mentioned. They were performed in the areas north of the Rhine, as seen from Switzerland. Then tribes who performed these Christmas plays migrated eastwards, to Hungary. One may ask why German tribes migrated eastward to Hungary in the 15th and 16th centuries. Such tribes migrated to the area around Pressburg, which today lies in Czechoslovakia, from the Danube down through Pressburg to the Spiš region, south of the Carpathians, to Transylvania, to the Banat, the area between the southern Danube and the Tisza. These Swabian tribes migrated there. And among these migrating tribes, the Haidbauern were the most characteristic. And it was precisely these people who settled in that area in Oberufer, a little downstream on the Danube, and brought with them these Christmas plays from their original homeland, preserved them in their original form and performed them in the local German colony from year to year. They were kept as a precious possession in certain families and treated as they were centuries ago. My good friend and teacher, Karl Julius Schröer, got to know them there in Oberufer; no intellectual, no improver had yet interfered with them. These plays were written down in the 1850s in the way the farmers who performed them could dictate them from memory to Karl Julius Schröer when he came there. He was a secondary school professor in Pressburg. When he came to where the plays were performed by the Haidbauern outside in the villages, he first went to the village schoolmaster, who was also the village notary. He said: That's nonsense, it's not even worth the effort of dealing with it! Fortunately, the intelligentsia had not bothered with it. So they were still able to perform the plays as they had been left by the farmers. That was a particular stroke of luck, because it is thanks to this that they have been preserved in these areas as they were. At most, one can still ask the question: how did people in this area come to keep this expensive heritage? — Then one must say: the present-day emigrants were preceded by the Moravian Brethren who emigrated from Czechoslovakia to the Hungarian territories. And these Moravian Brethren, with their intimate, deeply Christian life, which expressed the principle of brotherhood so beautifully, were already there when the other tribes, the Haidbauern and so on, felt the urge to migrate eastwards. It was not for any particular economic reason or the like, but it was actually an ideal reason for those people to follow the beautiful, intimate Christian brotherhood of the Moravian Brethren who had already migrated there. Even before the advent of Lutheranism, these people had carried over from the still essentially human spirit of Central Europe an ideal Christian atmosphere that did not take with it the damage of Catholicism present in the western countries, but also did not contain the damage of Protestantism, but was truly genuine, true Christianity, born out of a brotherly human spirit. That migrated over. And attracted by the ideal attitude, other German tribes then migrated to the areas that had been settled by the Moravian Brethren and imbued with Christianity, taking with them the most precious thing they had: these Christian Christmas plays.

These Christmas plays remained in their original form because they were separated from the mother country, so that the later intelligentsia could not get hold of them. And in this original form my old teacher and friend, Karl Julius Schröer, found them in Oberufer, half an hour's train ride from Bratislava, where he was a professor at the lyceum at the time, and wrote them down as the farmers recited them to him. They always learned them around Christmas time. That's how he had them recite them, and that's how they have been preserved for us, completely unadulterated; that's how they were still being performed until around the middle of the 19th century. Today they would have disappeared without him.

Karl Julius Schröer preserved the things as they were commonly performed down there. I was able to talk to him a lot about these things in the early eighties. He had vivid memories of the performances he had seen there, and so these plays have become dear to my heart as well. That is why we would like to perform them among our communities – with a few variations, because we cannot do it exactly as it was performed in the taverns, and we cannot do some of the other things that were performed there here either – but as genuinely as these things can be performed, we would like to present these beautiful pieces of genuine folk culture to you. For example, before the performance, the devil had a cow horn, and he ran around the whole village blowing it in every window, inviting people to come to the play: it was the Christian duty of everyone to come to Advent. Well, you can imagine: we can't do that here. We would arrive nicely if we told people that it was a Christian duty to come to Advent! Furthermore, the devil had to climb onto every passing wagon, causing unrest, rumbling around and so on. We have to leave that and many other things out here. But all that is possible should be presented in full, genuine truth.

I do not want to delay the performance any longer, but I wanted to say a few introductory words about the way the performances were usually staged and how the Christmas plays were rehearsed among the farmers.

during the founding meetings of the General Anthroposophical Society.

Yesterday I took the liberty of saying a few words about the historical origin of the plays that we are performing for you here during this Christmas Conference. Today I would just like to add something about the way these plays were performed in the Hungarian German colonies at the time when Karl Julius Schröer found them there in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The plays were the handwritten property of the most respected families in the village, so to speak. And they were performed from the village in which they were available, in neighboring villages within a radius of two to three hours. When the grape harvest was over in the fall, around the middle or end of October, the village's farming dignitaries would meet and discuss – not every year, but when fate would have it, I would say. The school teacher, who was also the notary, was not present; he kept to the intelligentsia, and the intelligentsia disdained these plays. But the farmers, after a few years when the plays were not performed for some reason, then said: Well, it wouldn't hurt our young boys if they had something better to do at Christmas time! And then they discussed whether there were any real men around who could be used to play. A list was put together. But then, when the men were asked if they wanted to play, and if they were chosen to play, they were subject to a number of strict conditions.

It says a lot for these areas that the boys – think about it, the whole time from October to Christmas and Epiphany – were not allowed to get drunk, were not allowed to go to the Dirndl and what we certainly cannot do here, had to obey absolutely the one who rehearsed the matter with them. Now, if we were to demand something like that, the other players would be very annoyed with us!

So these exercises were carried out with extraordinary diligence for weeks, during which the plays were rehearsed. But there was something else we could not do. Whoever forgot something or did something badly had to pay a half-kreuzer fine. Well, we can't do that either, we can't impose penalties for forgetting! And so these exercises were carried out in the strictest way until the first Sunday of Advent. Because on Advent Sunday they already started playing the 'Paradeis' play, which you saw yesterday. At Christmas there was the 'Christ-Birth' play and around January 6th there was the play that will be shown here in the next few days.

The arrangement of the play – I already mentioned some of it yesterday – was that the boys gathered and dressed up at the teacher's house, and from there they went to the inn where the performance took place. But the devil had already been sent away earlier. You saw him yesterday too. He was equipped with a cow horn and did something that we, on the other hand, cannot imitate, because he blew into each window. Perhaps the people in our village would also enjoy this, but we don't want to try it for the time being. Then he also jumped onto each cart and caused trouble. Then he joined the whole gang, as it was called. It was performed as follows: in the middle of the inn hall was the stage, and on the walls were benches for the audience. Karl Julius Schröer, my old friend and teacher, described the staging to me in great detail; after all, he wrote these plays down based on the way he heard them from the farmers themselves, and then corrected them according to the manuscript. Nevertheless, mistakes were made. And I must say that it is only over the years that I have come across some of the original text of these plays. For example, we could never get along with the first two lines that God speaks in the Paradeis play over the years. Schröer says: “Adam, take the living breath that you receive with the day.” It doesn't rhyme, nor does it make sense. It doesn't rhyme, nor does it make sense. It was only this year that it became clear to me that it is absolutely true:

Adam, take the living breath
that you received with the date...

with the date. That is absolutely traditional, that is, on this day. That is absolutely what was written there. I therefore found it really painful when, a few years ago, these plays were reprinted with tremendous sloppiness and carelessness. I have often been asked to reissue these plays; I did not want to do so without first editing these plays. But such prints were made with great carelessness, and so line after line of such nonsense can be seen everywhere in the prints that are now in circulation.

Of course, we have different means at our disposal here. We are not playing in an inn and cannot develop the same level of simplicity as was possible there, but nevertheless: in terms of the basic character, we would like to present these plays as they were originally performed among the peasants until the mid-19th century. You will get to know plays in which you can really see the basic customs of the people of yore. In these greetings, as they are presented before this Christmas Play, for example, there is something that beautifully established contact between the players and the audience of that time. Everyone actually felt that they belonged to the event, which at that time was precisely due to these greetings, which are actually something wonderful. Therefore, I have investigated whether there was not also such a greeting before the Paradeis play, and you could really, without the historical document being available, purely from the spirit of tradition, have such a greeting performed for the Paradeis play last year.

You will also see that in these plays, the most inner piety truly does prevail, sincere, honest piety, always together with a certain earthiness. And that is precisely something that is found in the fundamental character of Christian piety at that time. It was thoroughly honest, without sentimentality. The farmer could not become sentimental, he could not make a long face; he also had to laugh, even with the most pious. And that comes across to us in such a beautiful way in these plays. Some expressions will be noticed as unknown in the language, for example, some people will not know what “Kletzen gefressen” means. These are dried pears and plums that are eaten as such, especially in these areas at Christmas time. The pears were dried, then cut into slices; the plums were dried, and that is what the Kletzen were made of. But these dried fruits were especially baked into the bread, and in the bread these small pieces of the Kletzen were enjoyed with particular appetite. At Christmas, the Kletzen bread was something very special in these parts. That is why you heard in the Paradeis-Spiel:

Had Adam and Eve eaten Kletzen,
it would have been a thousand times more useful for them

than if they had eaten the apple in paradise! It is precisely in such things, which are so rooted in folklore, that one can see how genuinely these plays have been preserved. Now, we would like to present to you what has been preserved from ancient folklore as a piece of medieval history that extends into the present.

Perhaps I may also draw your attention to our poster, which is more appropriate to the Shepherds Play than to the Three Kings Play, but it has already been used by us today. We wanted to capture in pictures the mood of what these Christmas plays can still be in the present day.

On the occasion of the Christmas Conference 1923/24, both the Paradise Play and the Christmas Play were performed on 24 and 25 December at 4:30 a.m. and 6 a.m. due to the large crowds. Both speeches correspond almost word for word, so only the first introduction is printed here.

during the Christmas Conference

Today we will take the liberty of presenting the third of the folk plays that were performed everywhere around Christmas time in the older folk traditions in the areas of which I have already spoken.

The first play was the Paradeis play, which always began on the first Sunday of Advent and was then performed throughout the Advent season. The second was the actual Christmas play, which was performed roughly from the last Sunday of Advent until the end of January. This third play was performed around the time of the Feast of the Epiphany. I have already spoken about the history of these plays. Likewise, I have taken the liberty of mentioning some of the ways in which the plays were performed. I will only briefly explain the spirit in which this was done, with particular reference to this Epiphany or Herod play.

Here, too, you will see how contemplative piety, in this case even extraordinarily solemn piety, is compatible with a certain coarseness. This is the fundamental character of these plays and it is all the more interesting because there is actually a radical difference between the Christmas play, which we also presented the day before yesterday, and this Epiphany play. It has happened in some incomprehensible way that my dear old friend and teacher, Karl Julius Schröer, printed these two plays – the Christmas play and the Epiphany play – mixed up. I admit that perhaps some of the merging of the two pieces has occurred somehow through inaccurate transmission. But originally the two plays — the actual Christmas play and the Epiphany play — are quite different from each other in terms of their origin.

I myself still have some of this Epiphany play, which indicates the way it was received where it was shown. I discussed the other plays at length with the man who discovered them, Karl Julius Schröer, at the beginning of the 1880s, and they have become very present to me as a result. More and more of the details of these plays then emerged. But this play about Herod could actually be seen in all areas of German-speaking Austria around New Year's time until the time of the Three Kings and beyond. You could see people dressed as the Three Kings – which is what the story was reduced to – Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, wandering around with a star and singing very similar songs to the ones that appear here.

Now I would like to point out that the structure of these plays is actually reminiscent of the oldest drama. We have the common choruses in them everywhere, as they were called in the vernacular: the companions' songs, which actually represent the same thing – only in a late-vernacular way – as the Greek chorus represents. And then we have grown out of these songs, which would also be performed on their own, the actual dramatic dialogue and so on.

Now, when I spoke of a radical difference between the two pieces, this can be seen not only in the basic character, but also in the origin. Everything that is the style of the Christmas play, the play about the birth of Christ, points to the fact that the actual cultivation of these plays about the birth of Christ and probably also of the Paradise Play originated with the Brethren communities, which before the 16th century were much more numerous in Europe than one would think today. Everywhere there were such Christian brotherhoods, which had particularly cultivated that which is also reflected in these dramatic representations, which is based on the basic style of the Gospel of Luke. You will find the keynote of the Gospel of Luke in the Christmas play, so to speak. In contrast, this Epiphany play, which you see today, originated in the churches, from church people, albeit church people who were completely immersed in folklore. And this Epiphany play is truly Catholic, while the Christ Birth play comes from, I would say, the forerunners of Protestantism.

Where these plays were performed in German Hungary, Catholics, Protestants and everything were mixed up; they were taken quite interdenominationally. But originally the Christmas plays emerged from the brotherhoods, in which there were also wonderful Bible translations in a very magnificent German. It would give me great pleasure to present some pieces of these older German, truly wonderful Bible translations, because they show very clearly what a historical legend it is, an incredible historical legend, when it is handed down everywhere that Luther translated the Bible into German for the first time and invented the language for it, which is not true at all, because the older translations, which are just not known, are much more beautiful and much more poignant, even matching the original text much better than the Lutheran translation. So these plays originally also emerged from these brotherhoods. In contrast, this Epiphany play clearly has a Catholic character, originating from medieval clerics who had settled into the folk tradition and who also wanted to promote the interests of the church.

In contrast, the Christmas play has above all the character of the graceful, while this Herod play has in part the character of the suggestive. I would like to say that it would be quite disturbing at the Christmas play if you had incense with you; that would not be folksy. On the other hand, it would do nothing at all to this Epiphany play, which was performed by the clergy – you will feel it – even if the smell of incense were to be noticed somehow, because there is an extraordinary amount of suggestion in it that is to be brought out during the performance. But of course the church of earlier times also knew very well how to appeal to the people. Therefore, there is also genuine folklore, beautiful, true, full solemnity combined with folksy coarseness, and above all something extraordinarily deep that speaks to the hearts of the people. Therefore, this Epiphany play, Herod play, can be seen as a beautiful piece of medieval history, which has come down to the 19th century in its purest and most unadulterated form in those areas where the German colonists were among foreign peoples, where nothing of the so-called intelligence and newer improvement on the part of the clergy has mixed in , so that in the Christmas play, as in the Herod play, we have something that comes from the pre-Reformation period in both the folk-artistic dramatic style and the style of folk piety, and that brings the history of Christianity in Central Europe in the pre-Reformation period very beautifully to life.

And so that this may happen, which must be the desire of many people, we would like to perform these Christmas plays for you.