The scene is laid just outside Austria in the most conservative portion of Old Bavaria among a simple peasantry “whose passions, expressed without reservation or but clumsily concealed” were a novel revelation of human nature to theatregoers.
This gives the vagabond Wurselsepp an opportunity to ruin the priest with his parish as an expression of hatred caused by ecclesiastical prevention of his union to a Lutheran girl 20 years before.
In one scene of the play, Hell converts and wins the friendship of this enemy when he permits the burial of Wurzelsepp's suicide mother in consecrated ground.
Though a member of the “church militant and regnant,” Hell had sought, like the “Monk of Wittenberg,” for a way short of the requirement to inquire “May I do it, just as I mean it?”, a way which makes men “indifferent or apostate.” Herein lies a part of the tragedy of his position.
More tragic, almost to the point of suicide, is his love for Annerl, who also learns resignation like all Austrians, by giving hand and allegiance to the peasant, Michel.