In line with Naturalistic principles of the use of everyday speech forms, a large number of the characters speak in a Berlin dialect.
Leontine has fled her service to the pensioner Krüger because she was told in the late hours of the night to bring a pile of wood into the stable.
But as she learns that the work concerns a "beautiful dry club", she allows Leontine to stay the night with the intention of acquiring the wood herself.
While she sells the roebuck that she claims she discovered dead to a sailor on the river Spree named Wulkow, her youngest daughter Adelheid explains that Mr. Krüger was recently given a valuable beaver coat from his wife.
In his tragicomedy The Conflagration (German: Der rote Hahn), which was first performed in 1901, Hauptmann continues several themes prominent in The Beaver Coat.