Darkness, as if the Middle Ages never came to an end. Light, as if the gates to hell were wide open. And finally, a noise so infernal and brutal, as if these gates suddenly appeared wide, with power and from within: Who wants to share the archaic force of Easter, the Hallenberger should visit Easter night. But you can not really "visit" this unique event. He who lives with him, delivers himself to him. And experienced his blue wonder.
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Issue 17/2019
Who believes that?
Why even Christians no longer need a godDigital Edition | Printed Edition | Apps | SUBSCRIPTION
Otherwise Easter in Germany is a gekartetes games. We live in 2019, not 1519. The Middle Ages, as it is once again present in the small Hallenberg once a year, seems far away. If we still practice religious customs and customs, then out of respect for the community and its traditions. Alternatively, we play something for our children so as not to disappoint their faith - while the children play to get the candy.
There can be no serious talk of the Christianity of our West. His downfall does not appear catastrophic, but cute, almost cute. He can not be read by the number of minarets in our cities - but by the number of Easter bunnies in the supermarkets. This is the infantile fading to which the most sacred feast of Christendom has meanwhile pounded. Silly sculptures made of milk chocolate in cellophane, with red bows around the neck and bell jingles on it.
Is the ban on dancing on Good Friday up to date?
Conservative believers may regret this, welcome progressive atheists. Thus, in the current Kulturkampf, a minor skirmish has recently been fought over the question of whether the public ban on dancing on Good Friday is still timely. An insanely backward minority would like to play the majority of their faith - and their bells - the majority. An insanely enlightened majority in the metropolises, but otherwise embarrassed for the protection of any minority, would not like to play.
Hans Punz / DPA
Painted easter eggs for sale (Stock Image)
Tradition cultivates native customs and habits, because "one" has always done so, because everyone should do the same in the future. Modernity denies the "man," and takes pleasure in certain customs and practices only insofar as they are cultivated by threatened people in the basin of the Amazon or at the sources of the Nile.
In Germany you will hardly find such things anymore. Not in globalized cities, not on the suspended land. If anything, genuine cultic acts are held in the remote folds of the low mountain ranges; These are the funny geological surveys that are widely circumnavigated by every highway that Google Maps have long since leveled out.
Which brings us back to Hallenberg.
The place is located south of Winterberg in the Hochsauerland. No five thousand inhabitants. Founded in 1264, probably already settled much longer. Westphalian truss, a lot of slate from own quarry. Steel is processed into rims and door handles, wood into furniture. Winter sports fans come in winter. Until the next notable city, if Kassel is worth mentioning, it takes one hour by car.
Idyllic, but from a Catholic point of view, an outpost centuries ago, first from Cologne, today from the archdiocese of Paderborn. Fortress of faith against the Protestant south. Easter is a serious matter here.
The church is closing the shop
It starts with the fact that after the high mass on Maundy Thursday the tabernacle is not closed, but cleared out. The bells, otherwise the clock for everyday life, are supposedly "on the way to Rome". They are silent. The church is closing the shop.
Where elsewhere the silence is defended, the creaking of ratchets can be heard on Good Friday in Hallenberg, again and again, as a substitute for the bells on the hour. In the evening, one day before all the other communities do, the Easter Fire is burnt down on a hill above the village. Because Saturday belongs to the Easter Vigil, the actual drama.
On the square in front of the church, "the boys" gathered around huge crosses, lit orange with spherical lanterns. In addition to torches, these crosses are the only sources of light when the street lighting is switched off shortly before midnight. After the last beat of the tower clock, the choir intones a baroque passion song: "Jesus is completely torn from head to toe, torn all over, no member is unhurt."
A dangerous, a primitive belief
It's a more primitive belief than being preached on the radio on Sundays. Up to this point, one can visit the eerie hocus-pocus, which once a strict Catholicism was able to unleash. Only then does it become really interesting and in outline the nameless and elderly visible to which the church has just swung like a rider on his horse.
Because then it gets loud.
Where noise is not an expression of the symphonic cacophony, which breaks loose now. A howling and crackling and shrieking, the individual components of which are barely distinguishable. It is as if all the oppressions of the past resonate in one fell swoop. When played as Slayer, Motörhead and the noise band Sunn O))) simultaneously, while a jet fighter preheats the afterburner.
There are, besides the rattles and rattles, a hand-held siren from the Second World War, a night-watchman's horn, and a lansquenet drum from the Thirty Years War gives the delirious conductor, alternately edited by the able-bodied youth. On iron wheels, handcrafts therefore roll out like a "steam punk" nightmare whose sole purpose is to generate even more noise. Machines, operated only with muscle power and maltreated to the point of exhaustion.
Bear, Wolf, Zombies
The ludicrous volume and seriousness of this sinister procession are frightening. They are inside, in the village itself. And they are outside, where everything in the darkness of the forest can lurk. The Bear, the Wolf, the Swedes, Zombies, the White Wanderers from "Game of Thrones", demons, the evil par excellence - and always their own abysses, projected outward in a collective effort. From the nocturnal hills above, it must seem, as if a screeching Lindwurm with red eyes crawling through the place.
Nobody knows how old the cult of the crash is, what trauma it once brought to life. It is evident that the people there have been living the tradition of acoustic self-flagellation for centuries. She spreads terror and enjoys her own anxiety. It excludes and at the same time. It creates fellowship and identity in ways our modern societies no longer want to know.
The Hallenberger Easter Eve is something that should not exist anymore. A social mechanism from the archaic age, which apparently still works - and eludes any politicizing judgment, simply because of its age. A protection as "intangible cultural heritage" this cult does not need. He lives because he tells something about the human being in the dark in the long-forgotten language. Not more, not less.
After several hours, the gates of hell close again, as if nothing had happened. What was just a metaphysical militia dissolves into chatter, for a cheerful drink in the "Hotel Diedrich" or in the "Sauerländer Hof". In pleasure.