From one of his fellow-actors, I learned this of Josef Mayr. He has
always been what he is now, a hand-worker ("_gemeiner Arbeiter_") in
Oberammergau. He has never been away from his native town except once,
when he went as a workman to Vienna, and once when, in 1870, the play
was interrupted by the war with France, and Mayr himself was taken into
the army. Out of respect to his art, he was never sent to the front,
but kept in the garrison at Munich. When the war was over, and he came
back, in 1871, the grateful villagers resumed the play as their "best
method of thanking God who had given them the blessings of victory and
peace."

Canon Farrar, of Westminster, has given us the best and most
sympathetic account yet published of the various actors. Of Mayr he
said: "It is no small testimony to the goodness and the ability of
Josef Mayr that in his representation of Christ he does not offend us
by a single word or a single gesture. If there were in his manner the
slightest touch of affectation or of self-consciousness; if there were
the remotest suspicion of a strut in his gait, we should be compelled
to turn aside in disgust. As it is, we forget the artist altogether.
For it is easy to see that Josef Mayr forgets himself, and wishes only
to give a faithful picture of the events in the Gospel story."

As the Master enters the temple, he finds that its courts are filled
with a noisy throng of money-changers, peddlers, and dealers in animals
for sacrifice. He is filled with wrath and indignation. In a
commanding tone, he orders them to take their own and leave this holy
place. "There is room enough for trading outside. 'My house,' thus
saith the Lord, 'shall be a house of prayer to all the people.' Ye
have made it a den of thieves." ("_Zur Räuberhöhle, habt Ihr es
gemacht!_")