The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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 games have been preserved in a more genuine form among these colonists than in other areas where similar games were also played. 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 games were passed down from father to son and from son to grandson. The one who was allowed to preserve these games 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 games. 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 games 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 games 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 games were practiced, no music was allowed to be performed in the village that was different from the music that belonged to the games. 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 games from ancient folklore that belong to the series of games that were often played 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 games 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 games originate, we have Saxon colonists. But those who have cultivated these games 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 played, back to the 16th, 15th century, for the following reason.

These plays, which we are talking about here, were probably played 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 played in the areas north of the Rhine, as seen from Switzerland. Then tribes who played 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 played 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 played 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 games were played 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 played 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 games. But the farmers, after a few years when the games were not played 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' game, which you saw yesterday. At Christmas there was the 'Christ-Birth' game and around January 6th there was the game that will be shown here in the next few days.

The arrangement of the game – 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 games 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 played 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 games 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 game was the Paradeis game, which always began on the first Sunday of Advent and was then played throughout the Advent season. The second was the actual Christmas game, which was played roughly from the last Sunday of Advent until the end of January. This third game was performed around the time of the Feast of the Epiphany. I have already spoken about the history of these games. Likewise, I have taken the liberty of mentioning some of the ways in which the games were played. 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.

during the Christmas Conference

I have already told you something of the history of these Christmas plays on the occasion of the performance of the Paradise Play, so that today I would just like to speak about how these plays were actually performed in the German-Hungarian colonies where Karl Julius Schröer found them. So I will just briefly repeat that these Christmas plays, plays that had migrated from their Central European homeland to the east as early as the late 15th or early 16th century, were performed in the most diverse areas of Hungary well into the 19th century. Karl Julius Schröer later found them in the vicinity of Pressburg, in the Oberufer region in the Malatitsch family. The performance of these plays, regarded as an expensive inheritance that was always passed down in a family, was usually discussed after the grape harvest, i.e. in mid to late October, to determine whether the plays should be performed. This was necessary for the simple reason that the necessary mood was not present in people every year, for one reason or another, and especially because the necessary performers were not always available. But at certain times, after the grape harvest, people would gather at their regular table and say: Now our boys would need a certain new embellishment for their piety, and we could perform these plays again this year. And if the person in the family who kept these plays agreed to do so, they would look around to see which boys in the village would be suitable to perform them that year.

These plays were now rehearsed in a very strict way. You see, the whole performance was regarded as something that was connected with the most intimate religious life, with the most intimate piety of the people in those areas. And so there were strict rules for those who were to play during the preparation period. For example, they were not allowed to get drunk during this time, which meant a lot in these areas; they were not allowed to go to the Dirndl; they were not allowed to do many other things that they otherwise liked to do. The whole thing was seen as something that belonged to a solemn time, and as something to which one must bring a solemn mood. For example, in certain seasons of the year, not a Sunday went by without music in the inns in those villages where the Haidbauern or similar plays were performed. Now these people, who played the folk plays, came to a village where, in their honor, a not-so-bad music was performed during Advent when they came. They said, “Do you think we are comedians that music is played in our honor?” So all the entertainment had to stop during the performance. There were also other strict rules that we cannot possibly imitate. For example, those who performed in the plays had to obey their teachers strictly. Of course, we cannot imitate that. Furthermore, if any of the rehearsed gestures or attitudes were forgotten, a penalty had to be paid. Of course, we can't do that here either. The entrance fee was two kreutzers, children paid half. Two kreutzers is four centimes. We can't do that either. We also cannot imitate the fact that invitations to the games were issued in such a way that the devil would walk around the village half an hour or an hour before the performance began with his tail—imagine! —and a cow horn, blowing it into the windows everywhere, and telling people that they had to come, that it was the custom. Then he also jumped up on carts and drove his mischief. We could try it, maybe the sympathy for us would not decrease, but even increase a little. But so far we still believed that we should actually leave such things out.

So this was rehearsed. And when the Advent season approached, the Paradeis play was performed, as we did it here a few days ago, at Christmas time the Christ-Birth play and at the time of the Feast of the Epiphany the Herod or Three Kings play, which you will see or have already seen.

We can see from the outward structure of these plays what the nature of this particular rural piety was, which has been so miraculously preserved. This piety displays its honest, inner truth by avoiding all sentimentality and instead having a very matter-of-fact coarseness. This earthy nature, this indulging in earthy jokes, is something that was absolutely typical of folk plays, despite the fact that these people had full, honest piety. That is what is particularly characteristic. Therefore, you will see scenes of great solemnity here, and scenes that show the massive earthiness of the peasantry, of the folk.

From a remark such as that made by the leader of the singers, where he points out that the Rhine is nearby, you can see that the things from the area north of the Rhine have migrated here to the east, and they have indeed retained the language. Karl Julius Schröer wrote them down by ear, based on the people who knew these plays by heart and had performed them often in the 1840s and 1850s. In doing so, he made a number of mistakes. And these mistakes, which occurred in Schröer's print, made it impossible for me to fulfill the request to reprint a text of these plays, because it would truly take many weeks to restore the original, the genuine, honest version. Of course, one cannot consent to producing a sloppy text. You see, some things only come to light after a very, very long time. The printed text was thoroughly corrupted; for example, at this point it should read:

Adam, accept the living breath
you received with the date....

namely: with this date. That is: from this day on you receive the living breath.

If you want to bring these things to the stage today, you have to be conscientious about creating such texts. And so, my dear friends, we will endeavor to give you a picture of the way such things were originally performed, how genuine piety was sought in folklore, even though we have to use modern means. I will explain some of this at the next performance of the Herod play. It has also emerged from an artistic element that has arisen precisely in Central Europe, as a folk performance of ancient dramatic art.

You will see how there are choruses, and how the dialogue and the other dramatic elements grow out of the choruses in a beautiful way. It is really so, when you compare this primitive art with the Greek tragedies, you see how there is a very beautiful continuation in these folk areas. And the contact that exists with the whole audience, that you actually feel at one with the audience as a fellow player, is particularly evident in this greeting of everything in and outside the hall, on and off the earth. It brought something to light, to feel something of being at home. That is what gives these games their special artistic appeal.

We would like to use it to present you with a vivid piece of history that has basically been lost outside our circles for the most part.

during the Christmas Conference

We will now take the liberty of presenting the Epiphany or Herod play to you. In the past few days, we have presented the Paradise Play and the Nativity Play to you, and today we bring you the Epiphany Play. I have already spoken about the history, that is, the origin of the plays, as well as how they are rehearsed. I will just note today that the Paradeis play was usually performed in the way I have described to you, during the Advent season, the Christ-Birth play in the actual Christmas season and this Epiphany play around the time of the Epiphany, on January 6, around this day. One can clearly perceive how the style of the two plays, the Christmas play and also the Paradeis play and this Epiphany play, differ from one another. In the Christmas play, one sees quite clearly that one is dealing with something that comes directly from the folk mind. One must imagine something like the following.

There were, especially before the Reformation in Central Europe, but after the Reformation in the various German colonies, one of which is the one in Oberufer, where these games originated, the Moravian Church, which had a Christian community life as its mission and wanted to keep alive the religious sentiment present in the Gospel of Luke. And such brotherhoods were very widespread. It was a kind of communal life that sought religious edification in the shared feelings of those who came together in such a brotherhood. It was in these circles that plays such as this Christmas play, the Christ-Birth-Play, came into being. On the other hand, the play that we will see today was combined with the Christmas play only through an incomprehensible misunderstanding on the part of my old friend and teacher Karl Julius Schröer, I believe, and the two plays are not at all compatible in terms of style. This Epiphany play emerged from the clergy, which set itself the task of giving something to the people. You can see it everywhere in the game that it comes from the inspiration of the clergy, albeit from clergymen who have been intimately involved with folklore, who have completely immersed themselves in folklore, and who wanted to represent the interests of the church through such games in folklore.

Therefore, a certain primitive nature can be seen in the Christmas play, genuine piety combined with rural coarseness in honor of a religious folk style. By contrast, in this play, which comes before our souls today, we find solemnity. Solemnity that arises from the interest of the church. This Epiphany play has a thoroughly suggestive power, both in terms of the composition, which is extraordinarily dramatic, and in terms of the individual elements that we notice in it.

The Paradeis play and the Christ-Birth play were always on my mind during my conversations with Karl Julius Schröer at the end of the 1880s. He had seen the plays performed by the farmers himself, knew how to tell the story in an extraordinarily vivid way, and even then I was able to develop a clear idea of the ancient folklore contained in these plays. But I myself saw the basis for this Epiphany play during my childhood. In Catholic Christian areas, you could see these groups everywhere from New Year's towards Epiphany, with the three magi, the three kings, forming the center with the star. They went from house to house in the villages and performed the play together; not dramatically. But what you have here with us as choral songs, they sometimes performed with some dramatic things in front of the doors and in the houses they visited when there was space. But you could see that in this wandering of the Magi there was something that came from the church. And so the whole Epiphany play actually came from the church, and that is why it has its special suggestive power in the individual parts. It is therefore quite incorrect to lump these two plays with their completely different styles together and to perform them as if they belonged together, one after the other. This can only have happened because these plays had perhaps been combined before, and Karl Julius Schröer found them combined in Malatitsch's work. But anyone who can follow the whole development of the games knows that these two things do not belong together at all, but even have completely different origins.

But again, when you look at the whole complex of this Christmas game, you can see the great value placed on it by the Moravian Brethren community, which had moved from what is now Czechoslovakia to the east - they were, after all, the most excellent most ardent supporters of the Christmas play. You can see what is meant by the whole complex, on the one hand, in the folk tradition of honest, genuine piety; procuration, I would say, of the church from the other side with the Epiphany play. In this way, people have sought to pave the way to people's hearts; they have also found it. And it is true that one comes into quite interesting areas of religious life when one considers the diverse religious life before the Reformation. Of course, what was perhaps already influenced by the Reformation was added later, but historically one should at least recall how an honest, inward mood prevailed at the time when the Reformation was opposed. The clergy had to take such measures to win the people's hearts.

Some of what is presented in the story today is based on misunderstanding. For example, it is extremely interesting to get to know Bible translations, if not of the whole Bible, then of large parts of the Old or New Testament in those older, pre-Lutheran times. The language is much more original, much more heartfelt than the language that was supposedly created for the Bible by Luther. And it is actually just an historical legend when it is repeatedly told that Luther first translated the Bible into German. It is not even the case that he practiced the best art of translation, but rather that what existed earlier is actually better. And from the same mood that gave rise to such Bible translations in religious communities in the pre-Reformation period, such plays also emerged. So we are vividly transported into a piece of ancient folk culture through these plays.

We have to do this with modern means, but we try to perform them in the way they were performed back then. I have said before: certain things we cannot repeat. Perhaps an attempt could be made to send the devil around with the cow horn in Arlesheim and Dornach. He would have to blow into each window to make it clear to the people – that is the custom – that they should come to the Christmas play today! But I don't know whether that would make us more popular or even less popular.

There are some other things we can't imitate either. For example, these games were only played by boys. It wouldn't work for us to have them played only by boys either. Then we can't repeat this in particular, that penalties have to be paid if someone doesn't remember something the teacher had rehearsed in the right way. Yes, there would be a revolution among the players. Then we also cannot introduce the fact that we would take two rappen as an entrance fee, or four rappen were given and taken as an entrance fee at that time. Children paid half. We cannot imitate that either. I don't know, but it is reported that defective clothes and so on were repaired for the next performance from the money received in this way. Well, the audience was usually not as large as this one. So we also see into times when things were even cheaper.

But apart from all this, we would like to try to present a real piece of old folklore to your soul with this play, this Epiphany or Herod play, even though we can only do so by transposing it into modern circumstances, so to speak, but shaping these modern circumstances in such a way that the old style is preserved. And so we would like to present this Epiphany play to you in particular.

We will take the liberty of presenting to you here once again this year one of the Christmas plays that come from ancient German folklore. Perhaps I may start with something personal. I myself got to know these Christmas plays – the Paradeis-Spiel and the Christ-Geburt-Spiel, which are not being performed in public this year, and the Dreikönig-Spiel, which is being performed today – about forty years ago, I can say. At that time, I got to know these plays from my old friend and teacher, Karl Julius Schröer. Karl Julius Schröer, who was a university professor in Vienna at the time he named these games to me, was a professor in Pressburg, which today belongs to Czechoslovakia, but in the mid-19th century, in the 1840s and 1850s, was in a German colony in Hungary, western Hungary. If you go just a little further east along the Danube from Prefburg towards Budapest, you come to the so-called Oberufer region. There was a German colony in this Oberufer region. In my youth, it was very German, as were the German colonies in Hungary in general before the Magyarization: in the Spiš region, the Transylvanian Saxons, in the Banat and so on. Now, when Schröer was a professor in Preßburg, he once heard that interesting folk Christmas plays were being performed out in Oberufer by the descendants of those German colonists who had moved from the west towards Hungary to settle there, from areas that were probably located north of the Rhine in southern Germany, directly bordering Switzerland, north of the Rhine and as far as Alsace. And that seems to be the origin of these Christmas games.

It is the case – and we can still see this today – that these Christmas games were really still being played in the 13th and 14th centuries across the Rhine, perhaps later in northern Switzerland, at most in Brienz. The people then moved eastward, took these Christmas games with them as an expensive spiritual heirloom with a deep piety and then held it in extremely high regard. And throughout the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, they were then played around Christmas and Epiphany in these villages by the so-called Haidbauern.

It was a great annual experience of Christian piety in these German areas of Hungary. Because these Christmas plays had precisely this fate, I would like to say, they remained completely unadulterated until very recently. Because, you see, Christmas plays originated everywhere in older times, before and after the Reformation, and were gladly played. But in later times, they were improved by so-called intelligent people, which is what it is called, that is, their popularity was thoroughly expelled from them. And the improvements that the intelligentsia wanted to make have become a fundamental deterioration, so that these folk games could only be found in a really poor state in the more westernized areas.

But down there, these Christmas games meant nothing to the intelligentsia. When Karl Julius Schröer came to the villages in the early 1850s, the schoolteachers and the village notary found that these games were neglected. The “intelligent people” saw it as useless stuff. And so these Christmas plays have remained completely unadulterated because no one has improved them, that is, in reality, made them worse. They have remained that way throughout the centuries, and that is how Karl Julius Schröer found them in the mid-19th century. They were no longer played every year, but only when it was thought that the necessary personnel were available. When the grape harvest was over in October, the village dignitaries would gather at their regular table and say: “This year we have young men again – because only young men were allowed to play – to be able to perform these Christmas plays, and it does our people good to get a little piety back in their veins. Now we want to do it again this year.

And there was always one among them – it was always a respected family among the farmers of the village – who was the owner of the “manuscript”. They were not printed, these Christmas plays. He had received it from his father and his father before him, and so on. In this way they had been preserved through the centuries. And when the time came after the grape harvest, the person in possession of the manuscript would gather the boys around him and be their teacher, preparing the performances for the Advent and Christmas season, around the time of the Epiphany. And these performances were really carried out with the utmost seriousness. There were strict rules for the boys who were to take part. For example, these boys were not allowed to get drunk during the entire period in which they were supposed to prepare these plays. Anyone who knows these areas – I lived there for a long time – knows that it was a great, an extraordinarily great deprivation for these young boys if they were not allowed to get drunk from the grape harvest until Epiphany; nor to fight, for example. Who knows what else happened in those days when, for example, a mayor or even a district councilor was elected – that was one of the county's trusted officials – what it all meant in these areas: the boys were not allowed to fight on Sundays! So they had to lead a very pious life. It was really genuine piety, popular piety. Furthermore, it was prescribed that they not go to the Dirndl at any time. And no secular music was allowed to be performed in the villages where they traveled throughout the weeks. All the rules that we have here with our players, of course, we cannot enforce, that is, we can enforce those mentioned so far; but not the others. If, for example, someone had forgotten something they had learned, they had to pay a fine. We couldn't do that at our place. Nor could we enforce the rule that no one could be late and so on. So all these things were handled in the strictest sense there. It was really something extraordinarily disciplining for the boys of the place.

The Christmas games themselves – when the time came, they were celebrated in such a way that you could say: real, genuine popular Christian piety mixed with what was there as folk customs, not sentimentality. There was real popular piety in it: honest piety, not some kind of hypocritical piety, but honest piety, which is also mixed with a certain earthiness. That was precisely the sincere piety of old. It had been preserved until the 19th century.

Then, as the performances approached, some things came up that we can't imitate in the same way, because I don't know how it would be received if we did imitate them, for example. The devil had to go around the whole village with his long tail when the performance was approaching and blow his horn everywhere and tell people that they had to come to the Christmas play now. I don't know how it would be received; it might well be that people would like it! And we can't imitate that here either, with the devil jumping on every cart and doing his mischief when the performance is approaching and so on. When the people had gathered in the inn, sitting on the benches all around, the performance was given in the middle of the inn hall. Something else that we cannot imitate here was that people paid only two kreutzers, that is four rappen, as an entrance fee. That was an extraordinarily high entrance fee for that time; children paid half. When Karl Julius Schröer found these plays, everything was still preserved exactly as it had been in the mid-19th century, including the customs from the 16th century, when the people moved there and brought these Christmas plays with them.

And it was back then, forty years ago, that I developed this endless love for these wonderful Christmas plays, and I truly believe that something beautiful can be preserved if you play them again where you have the opportunity. Because there, in the former German areas of Hungary, they have not been played for a long time. The last family that had them has probably died out, and they have not been renewed, so what we have done for these games, which we started doing before the war, is actually a real renewal of the matter. There is a piece of German folklore in these games. Something has really been preserved that used to be very honored and appreciated among the people.

And here I believe that this still has its special value in that the Swiss remember, perhaps still in northern Switzerland, but most certainly when they have turned their eyes across the Rhine, that these games were played everywhere there in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. So it is here in particular that we can connect very good memories with it, and that is why we believe that it is also quite good to bring these games here for demonstration. With this in mind, we ask for your attention for these games.

Of course, we have to work with completely new means, with the means that a contemporary stage operation, as far as we have it here, provides, but within that we try to give the form, with the dialect and everything, as it was performed by the people. So we may call them: Christmas plays from ancient folklore.

This is the last speech by Rudolf Steiner about the Oberufer Christmas Plays. In the fall of the same year, he became seriously ill and died on March 30, 1925.