Bavaria: A Catholic heartland

Nowhere in Germany does the Catholic faith live as strongly as it does in Bavaria, as GÜNTHER SIMMERMACHER explains.

The priest declared a crisis at the end of Mass on the fourth Sunday of Advent. Addressing the full Sacred Heart church in the northern German city of Lübeck — traditionally Lutheran territory — Fr Franz Mecklenfeld announced: “We have no volunteer ministers on the roster for Christmas Eve Mass.”

No extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist, no lectors, no altar servers! Understandable, since Germans celebrate the birth of the Saviour mainly on Christmas Eve.

Still, the priest pleaded, having no ministers would be an embarrassment for this church — one of enhanced status since the 2011 beatification of three priests martyred by the Nazis — as the auxiliary bishop was coming from Hamburg, 65km away, to celebrate that Mass.

By Christmas Eve we had left Lübeck, so I have no idea if volunteers presented themselves for the Christmas Eve Mass with the bishop. But it seems implausible that such a crisis could arise in the Catholic heartland on the other end of Germany: Bavaria.

Despite the diminishing number of the faithful throughout Europe, Bavarian Catholicism is still going strong, at least in the rural areas—and that means most of Germany’s biggest state.

In a country where Catholics and Protestants make up a third each of the population (the rest have other faiths or none), Bavaria’s Catholics account for 57% of the population, the highest proportion after the tiny state of Saarland. About 20% of Bavarians are Lutherans, mostly in the Franconia area.

In the Alpine south, especially in Niederbayern (or Lower Bavaria), the Catholic faith is tangible in ways that it isn’t in other traditionally strong Catholic areas of Germany, such as the Rhineland and the Palatine regions.

It is painted on the houses, and it is evident in the tradition of roadside shrines, some placed strategically on the roads between villages, others seemingly at random, in case a passing motorist, cyclist or hiker is engulfed by an impulse to engage in prayer in a setting of some formality.

And the faith is tangible in the salutations Bavarians, like most southern German-speakers, exchange when they encounter one another: “Grüss Gott” (Greetings in God).

Lower Bavaria is famous for its large murals on many houses, called in the local dialect Lüftlmalerel (air paintings), that celebrate local professions, depict tales and hunting scenes. Many also express the Catholic sentiments of the owners, or at least their predecessors. These religious themes tend to focus on the Holy Family.

Bavaria might have no Marian shrine of the import of Lourdes or Fatima, but devotion to Our Lady seems to be no less fervent there.

The murals add to the fairy tale landscape of the region, which has been blessed with astonishing natural beauty: the majestic Alps, the pine forests and shimmering lakes.

Architecture also adds to the fairy tale environment, such as the castles built in the 1870s by King Ludwig II, the extravagant and troubled regent of Bavaria known as the “Fairy Tale King” who drowned in mysterious circumstances at 40 in 1886.

The most famous of these is Neuschwanstein, the edifice of which provided the template for Disney’s Sleeping Beauty castle which now serves as the company’s corporate logo. It is one of Ludwig’s three castles (plus other building projects), and not even the loveliest.

Churches, too, form part of the area’s enchanted atmosphere. As in most of Christendom, a church forms the centre point of every village. In Lower Bavaria they tend to be attractive externally, and generously decorated, stuccoed and frescoed inside.

Monasteries also form part of the scenery. The most famous of these is near Neuschwanstein: the 14th-century Benedictine Ettal Abbey.

Tourists come in great numbers to admire the artistry of the baroque abbey church, with its painted dome depicting 430 distinct figures. But it is not a static museum complex, but a living, working monastery.

To say the monks at Ettal are industrious is an understatement: they brew beer and also sell their own brands of liqueur, wine, cheeses, tea, perfumes and beauty products, as well as books, religious stationery and all manner of souvenirs. On top of that they run a boarding school — based in a building that once served as an academy for knights — and restaurants in the village.

Round the corner from Ettal Abbey is the village which attracts the world’s spotlight every ten years: Oberammergau.

In 1633, at the height of the Reformation, the Black Death was sweeping through the region. The terrified villagers of Oberammergau promised by way of collective prayer to stage every ten years a Passionsspiel, a play depicting the Passion of Christ, should their hamlet be spared the plague. It was duly spared, and on Pentecost the following year the villagers staged their first Passion Play — and they have done so ever since, at least every ten years.

As a rule the cast comprises amateurs who must come from the village, by birth or by residence. The last time it was staged, in 2010, almost half of Oberammergau’s 5300 population took part. The rest presumably engaged in activities to profit from the huge influx of half a million people who attended the 102 performances of Christ’s passion, delivered in German with thick Bavarian accents.

It was, it must be said, an impressive production, which also included a horse, a donkey, three sheep and, marvellously, two camels.

The whole region around Oberammergau benefits, presumably also Unterammergau, the sibling village that is no less picturesque but whose villagers neglected to strike what turned out to be a lucrative deal with God.

Perhaps the loveliest place in Upper Bavaria is the rococo Wieskirche, about 56km by road north-west of Oberammergau.

The Wieskirche is a pilgrimage site which also serves as a parish church for the nearby village of Steingaden (whose 12th-century Welfen church is also worth seeing). It attracts a reported million people a year. And yet, there are only two small and cramped souvenir shops there.

The Wieskirche was completed in 1754 by the architect Dominikus Zimmermann to serve as a pilgrim church after a local woman, Maria Lory, observed the presence of three tears on a wooden statue of the scourged Christ during evening prayers in a small wooden church on the site in 1738.

Those were less sceptical times than ours, and Lory’s report of a miracle caused a sensation, more so when people reported further miracles after having prayed before the statue. Before long, pilgrims came from all over Europe, even from Lutheran Scandinavia and Orthodox Russia, as parish priest Fr Benno Schöfl noted in a 1779 pamphlet.

The small church, which still stands at the site, could not accommodate the growing numbers of pilgrims, so in 1745 Zimmermann was given the brief to build a new church, with a fitting sanctuary for the once abandoned statue.

Zimmermann roped in his brother Johann, a gifted frescoist whose extensive curriculum vitae included work at Ettal Abbey.

For a church dedicated to the scourged Christ, it has a light air to it, to a great part thanks to Johann. Gold, white and light blue dominate. The ceiling’s frescoes are populated by lots of angels and cherubs. One of them is part painting, part stucco: its leg dangles casually from the ceiling over a ledge. The playfulness of it is endearing.

However, the almost saccharine impression is deceptive: Johann’s frescoes are incredibly detailed, communicating profound theologies.

At the rather more austere (give or take the occasional ornately gilded edging) ground level is the scourged Christ, but above is the risen Christ in glorious heaven, where we intend to arrive one day.

Above the choir a succession of angels carry away the instruments of Christ’s Passion, while the risen Christ is enthroned on a rainbow, a traditional symbol of forgiveness.

In two weeks time, the edition of February 18, Günther Simmermacher visits Catholic Munich.