On 7 October, 2007 the town of Oberndorf (part of Rottenburg tothe north of the main city, between Herrenberg and Tübingen) held a special worship service for the 60 year jubilee of the dedication of the chapel on the nearby Tannenrain hill.

On that day in 1944, bombs had fallen near the edge of the small town. They were probably from an warplane which had lost its formation en route to or from some other target. According to the church chronicle, men who were, at that very moment, gathered in the pastor's home for a meeting, swore an oath to build a small wayside chapel "in honor of the Mother of God, a Via Dolorosa and, as soon as possible, a larger chapel on the Tannenrain hill."

Construction began in 1946 after a local owner donated some land at the highest point of the hill. The project was financed by the people of the city. Construction materials were very hard to come by, but the locals managed to get the needed stone and gravel from nearby towns. At the athletic fields at the base of the hill, the materials were loaded onto oxcarts and carted up a narrow path to the top of the hill. Many of the smaller stones were carried up the hill by the locals themselves. Schoolchildren carried rocks in lieu of religion class. Young women, who otherwise were restricted from going out, took the opportunity to get out of the house. People who attended sporting events made one trip each up the hill carrying rocks before each game.

On October 2nd, 1946, the people of Oberndorf celebrated the topping out (Richtfest) at the chapel. "Max," the ox who had hauled the altar up the hill was slaughtered for the event. He had supposedly swallowed a nail and would not have survived anyway. It was dedicated a year later, on 7 October, 1947.

Ever since, the chapel has been used in May and October for commemoration ceremonies.

My account above follows very closely a press account in the lead up to the ceremony printed in the Schwäbisches Tagblatt (4 October, 2007).

What strikes me about this whole story is the central role played by local religion. It is almost "medieval." I don't mean that in a negative way. It simply harks back to a time when the church and religious modes of thought were so dominant that any and all unusual events were interpreted by default in Christian terms. Indeed, it seems more like a religious tradition than a memory event in the narrow sense.

People in a twentieth-century, industrialized country in the middle of a global war involving mass conscription, mechanized warfare, and subjected to an aerial bombardment, immediately - according to both oral tradition and the church records - interpret the event in religious terms. It is not considered a chance event, the fog of war, the luck of having a confused enemy aircrew drop bombs 50 meters to one side instead of another, but a matter of divine intervention. It is not part of a banal chain of cause and effect related to aircraft ranges or wind direction, but is instead directly connected to the ultimate causes and effects which consciously guide human history. It is not just a moment to breath a sigh of relief or even a brief prayer of thanks. It is not simply a moment of wonder. It immediately "fits" into the universal scheme and sets in motion long term action which permanently shapes the wartime expereince of the town in explicitly Catholic terms.

As people in Oberndorf - and throughout the region - no doubt knew, the air war had gotten very serious. Stuttgart had been subject to one of its first major bombardments in mid March (about three weeks before) and stray bombs then had leveled the nearby town of Kusterdingen and damaged Tübingen.

The enthusiastic participation in the construction of the chapel (and the attendence at the 60 year jubilee that puts National Day of Mourning ceremonies in the much larger city of Tübingen to shame) is evidence that this approach was not simply a matter of the church imposing an interpretation on the people. This interpretation resonated with the town. If the church had and to no small degree still has interpretive hegemony over these events, but that hegemony served a recognized and appreciated purpose. Religion served to order and make sense of events during a time of great fear and uncertainty and continues to shape and order the memory of the period up to the present.

I was mystified by the theology behind the event. I am not Catholic, and I asked myself why the town appealed to Mary following an event on Easter or whether there was a tradition behind this? I sent an e-mail to mariology.com and got the following response:


Just as one asks one's parents to help one during a crisis - either through
physical means or through their parents - so also in the spiritual realm we
are encouraged to seek the intercession of our spiritual mother. Revelation
12:17 shows Mary as the mother of the followers of her Son who protects them
from the attacks of the Devil. Such a response is both biblically sound and
based on the practice of all Christians from the first century. A copy of
the Sub Tuum prayer to Mary dating back to the 2nd/3rd century was
discovered in Egypt. (see below)

We turn to you for protection,
holy Mother of God.
Listen to our prayers and help us in our needs.
Save us from every danger, glorious and blessed Virgin.



Photos of the event, which was organized by the mayor, Karl Schneck, and Viktor Heumesser, can be seen at the sites-of-memory.de webpage: http://sites-of-memory.de/main/oberndorftannenrainkapelle.html.