Living in the mountains was and is surely a dream of many a city dweller or lowlands inhabitant. A dream that has quite a few facets. One of these facets was the notion of a great number of visitors from the northern regions, such as Lübeck-born Thomas Mann for example, who spent his holidays in Oberammergau, that Bavaria was a type of Italy, due to its joie de vivre. Ludwig Ganghofer continued to awaken the Germans’ interest and enthusiasm for the Ammergau Alps and its wonderful people with his bestseller "Der Herrgottschnitzer von Ammergau" (The Crucifix Carver of Ammergau) in 1880. Even the Imperial Court in Berlin was taken in by his ideas of a happier, more natural and creative life in this region, saturated with tradition and so in touch with nature.
The towns and villages in the region would like to invite you to the mountains, the Ammergau Alps, for meditative walking tours, and a whole lot more than tourist sights: paths leading to mental and spiritual impulses. This might at first seem strange to those who see the foothills and high country of the Alps merely as rustic Bavarian "Lederhosen" terrain or as a fun park for various types of sport, and believing that spiritual stimulus belongs in Indian ashrams or sweat lodges of native Americans. However, those who are keen to discover and are free of prejudices may take up our offer to find out more about the human presence hidden in the spiritual stores with regard to the region’s arts and culture, to learn more about themselves through the testimonies of centuries they come across at every turn, and to gain knowledge of what our splendid nature and, last but not least, the local people may reveal through legacies and reflections of any kind.
It would be immodest to expect to immediately experience the elated feeling reflected in the words carved into a glass window in the Pilgrimage Church of Wies by the abbot Marianus Mayer, who was responsible for the construction of the Pilgrimage Church of Wies, on completion of such a walking trail: "Hoc loco habitat fortuna, hic quiescit cor.", meaning "In this place abideth happiness, here the heart findeth peace”. This was, after all, quite a provocative assumption when considering that the author of these lines must have been thinking of the words by Augustinus, in his great quest for God and the truth: "Inquietum cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te. – Restless is our heart until it finds its peace in you". On the one hand, Augustinus' sentence, which appears at the beginning of his reflection on centuries of detours and meanders, makes us realise that the paths we must walk may be longer than those in the Ammergau Alps. On the other hand, he is referring to the starting point, the restrictions we want to break free from: we are restless, not at peace with ourselves, not truly self-conscious, not able to be completely by ourselves, nor be there for others, not to mention even others. Would it help to start the journey through the mountains?
In general, timeout and breaks from daily routine most certainly help, similar to the moments taken by an artist to step back from his easel to check the latest stage of his work. The fact that the remote – relatively speaking – valleys in the Ammergau Alps are well suited for this type of reflection can be seen in the concentration of monasteries in the region, such as Ettal Abbey, the Benedictine monastery nestled in a gap between two mountain ranges. Besides being a facility for ever-renewed orientation to the Bethlehemian fixed star, it is also an attempt to link heaven and earth. The fact that these and other Benedictine settlements, as well as the great Abbey of Monte Cassino, can be found on hills is proof that the members of the order hoped that this location would be beneficial to spiritual life. Can we find reasons for this?
What is however extraordinary, is that significant religious acts took place on or in the mountains, for example Moses’ thorn bush encounter and the acceptance of the Law at Sinai, or the sermon on the mount. And is Jerusalem not the archetype of a city on a mountain – curiously enough, at the same altitude as Oberammergau. Those who have experienced the mountains, even if only when climbing the Oberammergau landmark Kofel, will know that everyday life becomes a little less significant and the appreciation of the essential gains in importance. And the higher the climb, the more extensive the sky. To reach for the infinite and becoming expansive by gazing into the immeasurable expanse – can that not be classified as a type of religious experience? It is not without reason that crosses are erected on summits and mountain mass services are held here, too.
At the same time, when out in nature, one begins to question himself. Why is it that we find nature so appealing? Why does it affect us? To what extent are we part of it and simultaneously also something else? When in the mountains, we occupy ourselves with questions such as these, both on a physical and on a spiritual level. And there are consequences. Perhaps even those described by retired Bishop Stecher from Innsbruck: "Many paths lead to God. One of them is over the mountains."
The first European to climb a mountain for no practical reasons whatsoever, the poet Petrarca, concerned himself with thoughts of a very different nature when he summitted Mont Ventoux on 26 April 1336, namely thoughts of severe self-doubt. He reproached himself for having forgotten the Creator in marvelling over his creation. To calm his conscience he took out the book he had carried along on his mountain tour, the previously mentioned autobiography of Augustinus, and was taken aback when he came across the following sentence: "And man goes to admire the heights of the mountains and the powerful tides in the sea and the flow of the widest streams and the currents of the ocean and the stars in the orbit – and in so doing loses himself." So, who has gauged the prospects and risks associated with mountains correctly – the Bishop or Petrarca and Augustinus? Hiking trails in the Ammergau Alps provide an opportunity to question this personally.
Cultural stations along the route may also be places of spiritual, meditative involvement. We need look no further than Knoller’s picture of The Holy Family in Ettal Abbey for example, whose faces exude inner light, or some of the figures in the large manger in the Oberammergau Museum. Many sculptures whose gestures and postures are representative of spiritual attitude are also worthwhile objects for meditation: another indicator of how deep the belief truly was here. The wanderer will also not be able to bypass the Oberammergau Passion Play Theatre without browsing in the fascinating documentation of the production staged here, documentation that captures the vitality of the centuries-old heritage. The reason for the origin of the play was a collective catastrophe, a plague epidemic in the Thirty Years’ War. Precisely why it was that death was combatted by means of a passion play, is the question placed by Oberammergau.
What about encounters with the local people – can they too become significant stations for the meditating wanderer? Although paradise may not be on the banks of the Ammer, there is a good chance that you will meet friendly, warm people who are able and keen to communicate. And as these characteristics are as widespread as they are, it is easy to speculate that they must be the result of long-term nurturing across generations, similar to a well-maintained English lawn that represents the successful work of more than one generation. Anyone in search of forces that have been at work on a long-term basis will find them in the Augustinian Canons in Rottenbuch.
From the 12th century on, when the Welfs tasked them with pastoral care in Ammer Valley, up to secularisation in 1803 they shaped the spirituality of the people of the region. Typically, almost all churches in the parishes they looked after, feature the central symbol of this fellowship and their founding father in a prominent place: the burning heart.
This symbol too, is worth appropriating for meditative purposes! At first glance it seems to signify no more than the German gingerbread heart an Oktoberfest visitor may bestow upon his girlfriend: I like you; I miss you; I want to be with you – a relationship symbol or an erotic symbol, so to speak, the symbol that forms the focus of the French "Book of the smitten heart" in the late Middle Ages, for example.
Talk of the heart originates from much earlier, though. Even in early oriental testimonies it bore the psychological meaning of man’s centre, the root of all feelings, needs, judgements and actions, analogous to its central physiological function as one of the body’s organs. According to extracts from the Old Testament, the heart can be hardened, stubborn, darkened, or it can be an organ attuned to perception, while at the same time being a source of kindness and loving care. This was particularly the case if "the heart of stone" was taken from man to be replaced by a "heart of flesh", as was the case in Ezekiel. The heart provides a base for secret communication among people – as in the God/man relationship – that can go as far as becoming the dwelling of the other. In the words of a love song: "You are in my heart". And if the other is missing, the heart is filled with longing; if the other is present, the heart experiences feelings of transformation, ensoulment and enlivenment.
It is surprising, however, that the image of the heart is associated with an image of fire. Perhaps this can be explained simply in that a sensation of burning can be felt in the chest when experiencing certain emotions, be it happiness or hurt. And this is most probably based on a feeling of cold when experiencing rejection and a feeling of warmth when experiencing loving care. This logic is then applied to increased love energy, namely in the form of a flame – fire. Added to that, life in today’s society, whose coldness is lamented by literature with numerous images illustrating large-scale glaciation, it may be possible to understand why the church has always been praying to God to "ignite the fire of His love" in man.
These connections are particularly apparent in the figure of fire-headed Augustinus, the passionate admirer of God and man, who also denotes the expression: "What you wish to ignite in others must burn within yourself." The fact that he has justifiably been given the burning heart as a symbol is confirmed by his theory of the heart’s natural talent to love: "Besides truth, man has an internal secret ability to love, which, like a weight, draws him away from himself toward others, and in particular toward the most supreme. The weight of love is what gives man his social qualities."
So, if the burning heart symbol accompanies the hiker in the Ammergau Alps as a route marker, should the meditative walker yearn for some of the sparks from the Augustinian fire to glow or shine in him too, that is to say, that the benefit of hiking should manifest itself as an increase in love energy? An answer to this question may presuppose that a distinction is made between the different traditions of meditation. While the eastern tradition tends to show in a direction of "dimming" the impetus of the heart and of ridding oneself of this impetus, the tendency of meditation as we have known it in our cultural sphere in the last two thousand years is towards personalising all energies, channelling them in terms of polar, dialogical tension between the I and another person. The impact can by all means be an increased love of life and happiness. If we look at the burning hearts of the light-hearted Oberammergau inhabitants in the high altarpiece in the parish church, these are floating – on a tray carried by angels – in the direction of the skies towards the "heavenly mother", who is smilingly glancing down, and her son. This illustration of the liturgical "Sursum corda!" – "Lift up your hearts!" to some degree simulates the boisterous gesture of the lad tossing his hat up into the air, and also slightly resembles the generous "tossing of the heart across the ditch" as is the case in Ella Fitzgerald’s "Baby, take all of me". A wanderer blessed with a spirit of this nature could happily stride along just like his Eichendorff ancestors did, imagining or singing the song: "When God wishes to show true favour to someone / he sends him out into the wide world / and points out his miracles / in mountain and wood and river and field."
Whether the true hiking guest would find this mental image appealing is really a question of style and musicality. In any event, one would wish upon him that his journey off the beaten track – in moments of silence, away from all acoustic pollution and where global noises become silent – results in a fine tuning of his audible senses, allowing him to hear the beating of his heart.
