Frankenburg am Hausruck (Central Bavarian: Fraungabuag) is a municipality in the district of Vöcklabruck in the Austrian state of Upper Austria.

[4] When in May 1625 - at the time of the Thirty Years' War - a Roman Catholic clergyman was to be installed in Frankenburg, there was an armed rebellion by the majority of Protestant-minded citizens and farmers.

However, this rebellion was abandoned after three days because the Bavarian governor Adam Graf von Herberstorff promised "mercy" if the rebels came to Haushamerfeld without arms and weapons.

However, this "mercy" was terrible: Herberstorff appeared accompanied by a strong military unit and declared the Frankenburgers present condemned to death.

Karl Itzinger set a literary monument to this event in his novel Das Blutgericht am Haushamerfeld (The Blood Court at Haushamer Field), and since 1925 they have been reenacted every two years by some 400 amateur actors on the largest open-air stage in Europe.

As the first-born, Franz von Pausinger (1794–1850) received Frankenburg, which he sold, however, as early as 1828 to his brother Karl Johann (1795–1848), who also bought up the remaining shares by 1834 and thus became the sole owner of the manors.

In 1625, during the Counter-Reformation, Lutheran peasants revolted against the attempt by the local landowner, Count Herberstorff, to impose a Catholic priest on the town.

Despite his promise of amnesty, the Count had the town leaders arrested, divided them into groups of two, and forced each pair to gamble with dice for their lives.

The play was commissioned by the German Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, for the opening of the Dietrich-Eckart-Bühne, an outdoor theatre (Thingplatz) near the Berlin Olympic Stadium (now called the Waldbühne).

The anti-Austrian and anti-Catholic aspects of the Frankenburg incident were exploited in the play to serve the Nazi regime's nationalist propaganda aims.