Tyll’s Hometown, South Central Germany, 1620’s

Although the town is never specified, Tyll grows up in a remote rural town somewhere in Lutheran south central Germany just along the edges of the battlefields of the Catholic north and central Germany. The emphasis is on the town’s smallness. It lacks refinement, lacks culture. Its citizens lack education, most cannot even read, which makes them narrowminded, susceptible to religious superstition and resistant to novel ideas about the world, about the cosmos, really about anything. In addition, the town is defined by the routine drudgery and backbreaking work of its peasant class families. The two central points of the town are the bakery and the mill and that tight industry manages to sustain the town economically. Against that backdrop of a town dedicated to work is juxtaposed Tyll and his dedication to the art of tightrope walking. Within that town...