Conrad Baumgarten

Conrad Baumgarten is a fugitive from Alzellen whose desperate arrival turns the play’s opening danger into a demand for immediate aid. His brief but consequential appearance links the threat posed by an official to the solidarity that Wilhelm Tell extends to a man in flight.

Identity and Entrance

A bystander recognizes Baumgarten as a man from Alzellen. He enters breathless and appeals to the ferryman for a boat, making his urgency visible before the circumstances of his flight are fully explained. His arrival brings a threat from beyond the lakeshore into a scene where escape depends on someone else’s willingness to help.

The Danger at Home

Baumgarten recounts that he was in the forest felling timber when his wife ran out to him in mortal fear. She told him that the seneschal was in their house. The account establishes the immediate circumstance behind Baumgarten’s flight: the danger has reached his home, and his wife’s alarm sends him into urgent action. The available passage breaks off before fully recounting what happened there.

Wilhelm Tell’s Aid

After Wilhelm Tell helps him, Baumgarten addresses him as his angel and preserver. The gratitude gives the rescue a personal dimension: Baumgarten’s flight is not only an escape from danger but an encounter with assistance on which his survival depends. His appearance briefly places the play’s larger conflict in the intimate terms of a threatened household and a fugitive asking for help.