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What are Georg and Ulrich doing in the winter woods in "The Interlopers"?
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In "The Interlopers," Georg Znaeym and Ulrich von Gradwitz are in the winter woods due to their longstanding family feud over a disputed piece of land. Ulrich, the legal owner, is hunting Georg, whom he considers a poacher, while Georg is hunting game, asserting his family's claim to the land. Their encounter is driven by mutual hatred, but they ultimately confront a common enemy after becoming trapped under a tree.
Ulrich, the aristocratic legal owner of a piece of land that has been disputed for three generations, is out in the contested strip of forest hunting a "human enemy," Georg. Georg, who asserts that the land should rightfully belong to his family, is out hunting game. To Georg, the hunting is legitimate: he is defiantly asserting his right to gather resources on what should be his own land. Ulrich, on the other hand, considers the hunting poaching on his property and has gone out in the hopes of finding Georg alone in the woods. We learn that the generalized feud between the families has become personal in the case of these two, who hate each other bitterly. Ulrich and Georg do meet, caught up in hate, only to find out after being trapped under a tree and reconciling that they have a common enemy, also asserting a right to hunt...
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in these woods.
Two deadly enemies, Georg Znaeym and Ulrich von Gradwitz, are out in the woodland for two different reasons: Znaeym continues to poach on the disputed land, and von Gradwitz hunts Znaeym and the other "prowling thieves" in the hope of discovering the trespassers.
Knowing that the roe deer are exposed as they run from the approaching storm, von Gradwitz, the inheritor of a quarrel over "a narrow strip of precipitous woodland" harbors a deep hatred for "the tireless game snatcher and raider" on this long-disputed territory. Therefore, he gathers his foresters and they set out to patrol this jealously held strip of woods. So zealously does von Gradwitz guard this land that he disregards the threats of the weather, and in his efforts to catch his enemy on his land, he does not heed the high winds.
If only on this wild night, in this dark, lone spot, he might come across Georg Znaeym, man to man, with none to witness—that was the wish that was uppermost in his thoughts.
Giving no heed to anything but his intense hatred for his foe, Ulrich steps around the trunk of a huge tree and suddenly comes vis-à-vis with his enemy. At that instant, both the foes have their fates altered forever.