Don Juan has been a central play in the traditional German-speaking repertory since the 18th century. Thus, it was naturally one of the German puppet plays (Deutsche Puppenkomödien) published in the 1870s by musician Karl Engel, who would then write a study on the legend of Don Juan in the theatre – published on the centenary of Mozart and Da Ponte’s Don Giovanni (Die Don Juan-Sage auf der Bühne, Dresde, E. Pierson, 1887). The introduction he wrote for this play shows that he revered Mozart’s opera. Engel was a puppet amateur, not a rigorous scientific publisher – he rewrote the manuscripts as he pleased. In his version, Don Juan is a seducer like Don Giovanni, and not only a murderer as was often the case in puppet plays. Engel was well aware of it, since he added extracts in the appendices from another manuscript, in which Don Juan becomes a serial killer – Don Juan, der vierfache Mörder, oder das Gastmahl um Mitternacht auf dem Kirchhofe (Don Juan, the serial murderer, or the midnight Feast in the church’s cemetery). In this version, Don Juan remarkably kills the hermit he met in the woods, in order to steal his clothes. Engel finds indulging in violence unnecessary. In fact, his interpretation of Don Juan features many references to classical and modern literatures. He especially uses them to justify the comparison many of his contemporaries drew between Don Juan and Faust. The latter had in fact been the first play to be published in the Deutsche Puppenkomödien, in 1874. It is worth nothing that in the second Don Juan published by Engel, the comic character is no longer called Hans Wurst but Casperle.

Don Juan tries to blindside his rival Don Philippo by abducting Donna Amarillis during the night. But he is caught by her father – the governor of Seville Don Pietro – whom he kills in a duel. Then he tries in vain to borrow money to an old cousin (or to his own father, whom he eventually murders in the second version). When he mentions selling his soul, Hans Wurst wants to help him out by making the devil appear thanks to a formula he learnt from a magician. However, Don Juan mocks the devil and Hans Wurst is swept into the air on a giant sausage – thankfully, he lands at the inn where his master was waiting for him. After a shipwreck, the two men reunite in a wood near Seville. There, they also meet a hermit and Don Juan forces him to give him his clothes. Don Philippo arrives and drives them out of the woods. Don Juan stabs him and leaves him for dead. Then he attempts another time to seduce a shepherdess and Donna Amarillis, who also went hunting. Don Philippo’s men are still after Don Juan and Hans Wurst, who manage to get to an inn near the church’s cemetery. Don Juan invites the statue of the governor Don Pietro for dinner, then agrees to follow his guest into the vault, where he dies in the pains of hell. As for Hans Wurst, he marries the manager of the inn.