OBERAMMERGAU'S MADONNA

Evening Star, Issue 21835, 26 September 1934, Page 5

OBERAMMERGAU'S MADONNA

Streets do not exist in Oberammcrgau. You thread your way between painted, shuttered chalets, built so close to one another as to give the impression of a somewhat crowded stage, whil<for a stranger to find his way to any particular house is almost as impossible as it is for the villager to direct him, writes Elizabeth Kyle in an exchange. But to find Anni Rutz’s home is fairly easy, for her father was the blacksmith, and the business is still being carried on beside' the tall white house in which she and her mother live. Stand ami listen for a moment. Through the still mountain air you wijl be able to hear the clang of the anvil, and, by following the sound, you will find yourself at the house, looking up at the prim shuttered windows, and at the white-washed wall on one side of which is painted the figure of the Madonna against a background of glittering gilt, with a vine sprawling across it. On the other side of that wall lives the girl whom all the world comes to see act the role of the Mother of Christ. To be given this part is the highest honour known to the women of Oberamraergau, and it is a part which Anni Rutz took with much simple dignity in 1930. Since then she has lived a while in England, but came back to help her widowed mother run the house. Passersby may find it difficult to reconcile a glimpse of her as she is on ordinary days—in the simple checked dress and the Bavarian black and green striped jacket—with the poignant, archaic figure she presents upon the stage. Simple, friendly, unaffected, she may even invite you to come upstairs to her own room for a talk, and thus give you the opportunity of seeing what a typical Bavarian bedroom is like. The house itself is 300 years old, and the furniture has been carved and painted in the village. It is in a restful pale green shade, ornamented with flowers and scrolls. The porcelain stove stands in one corner, a hand-made strip ol carpet banded with gay colours runs down the centre of the room, and the fresh white muslin window curtains are looped back to show the view of Oberammergau’s many roofs with the pale blue mountains behind. So, in her own setting, living her own life, Anni Rutz prefers to remain, unlionised, totally lacking the airs and graces of a prima donna, filling the chief woman’s part in the most famous religious play in the world.-