Alzellen

Alzellen is identified as the home of Conrad Baumgarten and his wife; its decisive place in the play is as the domestic setting of the threat that drives Baumgarten to kill the imperial seneschal Wolfshot.

Setting and Residents

Alzellen is named as the place Baumgarten comes from and where his wife lives. The play connects the locality to their household rather than describing its size, institutions, or wider community. Its identity in the action is therefore carried by a specific family and the danger that reaches their home.

The Threat to Baumgarten’s Household

Baumgarten recounts that he was in the forest felling timber when his wife ran out of their house in mortal fear. She told him that the seneschal was inside. The later account identifies this official as Wolfshot, who dwelt at Rossberg and desired Baumgarten’s wife. Baumgarten killed him with an axe; the play thus links the threatened household in Alzellen to a violent act of resistance, although it does not specify where the killing itself occurred.

Narrative Significance

Alzellen anchors the personal consequences of official abuse in a particular home: the danger is not abstract, but reaches Baumgarten’s wife while he is away at work. The episode also connects a local domestic crisis to the broader conflict with oppressive imperial officials, while the evidence presents Alzellen chiefly through this household and the events that begin there.