Attinghausen and Rudenz’s Uncle-Nephew Relationship

Werner, Baron of Attinghausen, and Ulrich von Rudenz are uncle and nephew whose bond is tested by Rudenz’s distance from the household and divided allegiance. Their relationship first appears in a moment of return: Rudenz enters in a knight’s costume and asks his uncle what he wants of him. Attinghausen’s answer is not simply a family greeting. He sees how foreign the home has become to Rudenz, urges him to remember his native land, and asks him to stay. Rudenz refuses because he has given his word. Only near Attinghausen’s death does the nephew’s political direction change; their reconciliation comes with the grief of knowing that the uncle will not live to see it fully.

Kinship and Estrangement

Rudenz enters Attinghausen’s household dressed as a knight, a visible sign that he has taken on an identity associated with the world beyond his uncle’s home. His first words, “Uncle, I'm here! Your will?” recognize the family tie while also making the visit sound like a response to an obligation. Attinghausen, by contrast, addresses the emotional distance between them. After gazing at him for a considerable time, he laments that Rudenz has indeed become a stranger in the house. The repeated appeal, “Oh, Uly! Uly!” makes the estrangement personal: Attinghausen is speaking not to an absent political ally but to a relative whose childhood name he still uses.

The uncle’s grief is sharpened by the contrast between physical presence and inward separation. Rudenz has returned, yet Attinghausen sees that the household no longer feels like home to him. The scene therefore presents their kinship as something that persists despite a widening difference in loyalties. Attinghausen can still call Rudenz by an intimate family name and ask for his company; Rudenz can still address him as uncle, but does not accept the request that follows.

Conflicting Allegiances

Attinghausen’s concern for his nephew is inseparable from the political crisis surrounding them. He says the king’s displeasure rests upon the land and invokes the heart of every true man, setting Rudenz’s personal choice against the needs of the country. He acknowledges that Rudenz may pay the honor due to the king, but rejects the king’s assumed right to usurp authority. In the uncle’s account, respect for a ruler does not require surrendering the community’s claims.

Attinghausen frames the alternative before Rudenz as a bargain with a cost. He urges him to go into the wider world, take land as a fief, and become a prince’s vassal, warning that Rudenz would barter away his free soul. This is an appeal from an older relative who fears that advancement under a prince will detach his nephew from both liberty and home. It does not establish that Rudenz has already received such a fief: Attinghausen describes the path he believes Rudenz is choosing, while the stage directions show Rudenz arriving in knightly dress and later insisting that he is bound by his word.

That insistence becomes decisive when Attinghausen asks him not to go to Altdorf, but to give this one day to his friends. The stage direction has the uncle take Rudenz’s hand; Rudenz answers, “I gave my word. Unhand me! I am bound.” The gesture makes the disagreement intimate and immediate: Attinghausen reaches to keep his nephew near, and Rudenz asks him to release him. His pledge takes precedence over the plea of family, at least in this encounter. The passage leaves the precise terms of his word unstated, but clearly establishes that he considers it binding enough to leave despite his uncle’s request.

Reconciliation and Attinghausen’s Death

The later scenes reveal a change in Rudenz’s allegiance. Stauffacher tells Attinghausen that Rudenz has found his heart and is one of their own. Attinghausen’s question—whether his nephew has spoken for his native land—shows what matters most to him in this reconciliation: not simply that Rudenz has returned to the household, but that he has taken a public position for the country. The news answers the uncle’s earlier appeal, although it reaches him when his life is ending.

Rudenz arrives hurriedly as others gather around Attinghausen’s body and the castle bell tolls. He asks whether his uncle lives or can still hear him, then looks upon the body and cries that his repentance has come too late. His grief centers on the lost possibility of recognition: he wishes Attinghausen had lived a few moments longer to see the change in his heart. The timing gives their reconciliation its painful shape. Rudenz has turned toward the cause his uncle urged, but cannot share that change with him while he is alive.

Attinghausen nevertheless hears of Rudenz’s deed before he dies. He is told what his nephew has done and blesses the valor behind Rudenz’s words. That report does not erase the delay or Rudenz’s remorse, but it means the uncle’s final knowledge includes the change he had hoped for. Rudenz then kneels beside the dead man, addresses him as a beloved figure, and mourns over his lifeless hand. The stage action completes the movement from the earlier hand Attinghausen had taken to prevent his departure to the hand Rudenz can now touch only in mourning.

Inheritance and Shared Belonging

In addressing the mourners, Rudenz calls Attinghausen their common parent and urges them not to be dismayed. He also begins to speak of inheritance, saying it is not only the uncle’s lands that he inherits. The surviving words make the inheritance both material and communal: Attinghausen’s death leaves property behind, but Rudenz presents what he receives as extending beyond land. The nephew who once seemed a stranger in the house now speaks as a member of a wider community joined in mourning.

The relationship thus carries a political change through a family bond. Attinghausen’s pleas link home, freedom, and service to the native land; Rudenz’s eventual decision answers that appeal, but only at the threshold of his uncle’s death. Their story does not end with the two reunited in a living household. It ends with Rudenz acknowledging what Attinghausen wanted him to become, mourning the man who had urged him toward it, and taking up an inheritance that reaches beyond the uncle’s estate.