FLOODS IN GERMANY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 115, 17 May 1930, Page 9

FLOODS IN GERMANY

WILL DISASTERS RECUR? VAST AREAS UNDER WATER PASSION PLAYERS AFFECTED [By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) Received Mav 16, 10.20 p m. BERLIN, May 15. The Upper Rhino has risen seven feet in 12 hours as tho result of 100 hours of torrential rains. The rivers and lakes of southern Germany are Hooded and thousands of acres of land are under water.

Inhabitants fear that they may be compelled- to leave the villages, especially in the Black Forest, where the streams are higher than during the great floods of 1882 and 1896. The Baden Government is already organising relief for the homeless. Oberammergau, where tho Passion play is attracting tens of thousands of p oplc is threatened with isolation. Several local lines already are under water, while the incessant rain, is spoiling the performances. The river Tsar has reached the level of the 1924 disaster. OBERAMMERGAU THEATRE HUGE EXPENSE INVOLVED The sum of £150,000 must he received from the audiences which, it is hoped will assemble to witness the famous Passion Play this year before the people of Oberammergau can hope to make one penny of profit. If that amount is not forthcoming said the special correspondent of a London paper recently the little village community will be crushed under an overwhelming burden of debt and this year’s performance may be the last of a series which has been carried on for three centuries.

Vast sums of money have been invested. both bv the Oberammergau •community and by the individual inhabitants, in the peasant productionBritish and American visitors are expected to provide the harvest. If they fail to put in an app ’ - anee in as large numbers as anticipated.■ or with their pockets not as richly lined as Oberammergau hopes, this charming little village will be faced with ruin.

The box-office receipts from the bO performances to be given between May 11 and September 28 must amount to more than £109.000, if only the loans advanced for the rebuilding of the Passion Play theatre and the. construction of new motor roads leading to the villages are to be repaid. Another £50,000 it is estimated conservatively has been borrowed, privately by the inhabitants to finance extensive improvements to their homes, in which they propose to receive the tour-

ists as paying guests. Many of the houses which I have seen are bei • furnished with a luxury more in keeping with, the requirements of the Riviera resorts than of a simple mountain village proposing to put up strangers for a couple of nights. New houses are springing up every, where on the outskirts of the village, all of them designed to reap large profits from the Passion Play industry, and all built by comparatively impecunious people on borrowed money. The loans, Herr Raab, the manager of the play, informs me, must be covered. in full during the present season. “Trade conditions,” he said, “are so bad here that we can on no account face the prospect of having to pay heavy interest on even a fraction, of the loans, in addition to our heavy taxes. ’ ’

The official prices are put on an average at £3 a head, inclusive of board and lodging, for two nights and a day, as well as a ticket of admission to the play. No fewer than 5200 spectators can . accommodated in the rebuilt theatre and the inhabitants are praying for the play to be performed before a full house at each of the 50 performances.