peasants, with Ulrich and Bertha among them, now throng Tell's home with the cry: "Long live William Tell, our shield and saviour!" Bertha, greeting the commoners as comrades, asks to be accepted into their League of Freedom. Her request is granted and she gives her hand to Ulrich. He proclaims: "And from this moment all my serfs are free!" But soon word comes that Albert, the Emperor of Austria, has been assassinated by his own nephew John. One day, Tell's wife receives a visitor at their cottage; the visitor is dressed as a monk, but Tell soon recognizes him as John in disguise, fleeing his would-be captors. John, knowing that Tell has killed Gessler, expects approving words from the archer, who, instead, denounces John's crime. Nevertheless, Tell helps John flee, on the condition that John expiate his crime as soon as possible. Performance history and influence The first public performance of Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell was staged in Weimar under the direction of Johann Wolfgang Goethe on 17 March 1804. In the summers of 1912 to 1914 and again between 1931 and 1939, Schiller's play was staged in Interlaken. It was filmed in both German and English versions in 1934, both versions starring the same leading actors (Conrad Veidt was Gessler). Since 1947 the play has been performed annually in Interlaken at the Tellspiele. In 2004 Schiller’s play was staged for the first time at the Rütli Meadow (German: Rütliwiese), on the occasion of its 200th anniversary. Since 1938 it has also been performed every Labor Day weekend in New Glarus, Wisconsin in English, and until recently also in German. The characters of the play are used in the national deck of cards of Hungary and Austria and are known as Tell pattern cards. The deck was born around 1835 in the times before the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, when revolutionary movements were awakening all over in Europe. The Aces show the four seasons. These cards spread across the Austro-Hungarian Empire and are still the most common German-suited playing cards in that part of the world today. Characters portrayed on the Obers and Unters include: Hermann Geszler, Walter Fürst, Rudolf Harras and William Tell. It was long believed that the card was invented in Vienna at the Card Painting Workshop of Ferdinand Piatnik, however in 1974 the very first deck was found in an English private collection, and it has shown