RARE \"Oberammergau Passion Play\" Anton Lang Hand Signed Receipt For Sale

Up for sale a RARE "Oberammergau Passion Play" Anton Lang Hand Signed Receipt dated 1922. 

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Anton Lang (17

January 1875 – 30 May 1938) was a German studio potter and an actor in

the Oberammergau Passion Play.

He played the role of Jesus Christ in 1900,

1910, and 1922.[3] He was the Prologue Speaker in 1930[4] and again in the Jubilee Production

of 1934. He was born on 17 January 1875 in Germany. He played the role of Jesus Christ in the Oberammergau Passion Play in

1900, 1910, and 1922. Lang

died in Munich on 30 May 1938 at the age of 63, following an operation for a

stomach ailment. In 1923-24 Lang visited the U.S. and was asked to comment on

many of the current events of the day. When reporters told Lang of “religious

clashes” in the United States, which then was witnessing fights between

evolutionists and religious fundamentalists and the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan

and its anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic propaganda, and of “the organized

manifestations of bigotry” he “seemed incredulous” and “shook his head

deprecatingly.” Lang commented that “At Oberammergau we have all kinds. There

is a Catholic church, and a chapel that is used by the Protestants ---

Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, and all kinds. But that isn’t what counts.

It is how one lives that makes one good or bad; and Jesus, I believe, will take

us all to heaven according to our virtues.” “And the Jews?” a reporter asked.

Lang smiled again, and replied: ‘Yes, I think the Jews, too, will go to

heaven.’” In

1938, rumors reached England that Lang was in trouble with the Nazi

authorities. He was a pacifist and also opposed Nazi attempts to add overtly

anti-Semitic language to the Passion Play. Two English newspapers hired

Elizabethe Corathiel to visit Lang. “He was exceedingly anxious to impress upon

me the necessity of denying the rumours, pointing out that it might be very

dangerous for him if they were allowed to persist.” Two weeks later Lang was

dead’. Corathiel was “convinced that the political trend at the time hastened

his end.”[7] Almost the whole Oberammergau

population attended Lang’s funeral. “There were no tributes, however, from Nazi

party or State authorities nor was there any Nazi uniform among the 1,200

mourners in the little churchyard.” Two

of Lang’s sons, Karl and Friedl, belonged to a Catholic Youth group that

visited Rome in 1934. Friedl recalled: “On our way back to Germany, our buses

were stopped at the border. The guards seized our cameras, our shirts and

buckles, tents, banners etc, and took our names. After running the gauntlet of

a bevy of abusing HJ [Hitler Youth] boys, we were allowed to proceed to Munich.

There the police were already waiting for us. We were again arrested, and taken

to the Police Headquarters where our passports were checked and our names

registered. In the morning they let us go.” Two of Anton’s three sons, Anton

Jr. and Friedl, escaped Germany to the U.S. before the war. Both became U.S.

citizens and were college professors. One of his three daughters, Martha Krause-Lang, was

professor for economics and social work at Munich. According to an urban myth

given credence by a number of obituaries of Billy Wilder notably in the Independent and The

New York Times, Lang was a hardline fascist and led, in 1938, a violent

attack on the sole Jew living in Oberammergau at the time. He was not allowed

to appear in post-war Passion Plays by an artistic censorship committee,

because of his record. The Wilder comment and the artistic censorship comment

may refer to Alois Lang the Christus of 1930 and 1934, who was subject of a

denazification court in 1947.[9]