Oberammergau 2010

NEWS UPDATE:
New availablility added to our listings: 3 places have become available on a 10 day coach trip to Oberammergau, 27th August - 7th September.

We are pleased to announce that every pilgrim travelling with us to Oberammergau will receive a special complimentary commemorative lap blanket!


We still have some tickets available for this amazing once-in-ten-years experience.

Individuals can still join some of our existing groups.

New Groups are also in luck as, owing to cancellations, we have enough tickets for whole groups on a limited number of dates - see the list below.
Dates
Spaces Remaining
Nights in
Oberammergau
Departing from
16 - 23 Aug
3
2
Heathrow or Manchester
27 Aug - 7 Sep
3
2
Coach from Tunbridge Wells Area
3 - 10 Sep
8
2
Gatwick
6 - 13 Sep
8
2
Heathrow or Manchester
6 - 13 Sep
2
2
Dublin
18 - 25 Sep
11
2
Heathrow or Manchester

In the year 2010, the Passion story will be presented for the 41st time in Oberammergau. In unique continuity, the community of Oberammergau has maintained the passion play tradition throughout the centuries.


Promised in a moment of mortal threat – so began the history of the Oberammergau Passion Play in 1633. In the middle of the Thirty Years War, after months of suffering and death from the plague, the Oberammergauers swore an oath that they would perform the "Play of the Suffering, Death and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ” every ten years.

At Pentecost 1634, they fulfilled their pledge for the first time on a stage they put up in the cemetery above the fresh graves of the plague victims. In the year 2010, the Community of Oberammergau will for the 41st time be performing the play they have preserved throughout the centuries with singular continuity – often against resistance. Passion plays were performed throughout Europe in the Middle-Ages, then banned from the cities in the 16th century.

After experiencing a heyday in Baroque-Catholic Southern Germany, they were forbidden there as well in the middle of the 18th century in the wake of the age of enlightenment. Oberammergau alone kept the tradition alive.

Was it a sense of obligation to the pledge? Or was it the theological support of the nearby Ettal and Rottenbach Monasteries that made the difference? In any event, the people succeeded in acquiring a privilege from the Lord Elector and thus rescued the fascinating undertaking of depicting the Passion of Jesus on the stage.