Kurt von Benno Baumeister

Kurt Baumeister was a main antagonist of the series. He was the eldest brother of Wendelin von Benno Baumeister. As the eldest son of the ruling noble, he was, until his death, the presumed heir to the elder Baumeister family estate and its hereditary knighthood.

Personality
Early on, Kurt was considered a kind and caring person. However, he held a deep jealousy toward his other siblings due to them being far more skilled, educated, and capable than him, and a fear that they would one day supplant him as the heir to the knighthood. After four of his brothers left the territory to start their own lives, and a fifth married into the branch family of the Junior Commander, his jealousy died down considerably, but with the consolidation of his eventual power he became arrogant and abusive.

When his youngest brother Wendelin gained a noble title higher than his own family's, his jealousy returned. At the behest of Duke Bleichröder, Wend returned to the southern territory to start development of the monster-infested lands to the south of the Baumeister territory. Kurt became convinced of a conspiracy that Wend and his other brother Hermann (the second brother, who married into the branch family) plan to usurp him and deny him his right to rule the Baumeister territory.

Synopsis
After he formally becomes the presumptive heir of the family estate, his once loving and caring personality shifted toxic rather quickly, as he started to abuse his power to pressure the locals working in his territory to submit to him.

At some point, prior to Wend's marriages, the major nobles and King Helmut started to maneuver Wend into taking over the elder Baumeister estate. Kurt was furious and attempted to assassinate Wend in order to inherit his assets and title, as Wend was the only member of his separate family line, at that point in time. The judicial law of the Helmut Kingdom, would have appointed Kurt as the proprietor of all assets left behind by Wend, if he were to suffer an untimely death (in the anime, this is changed to his children potentially inheriting the assets/title, and Kurt only being proprietor until a time when his children are old enough to take ownership). However, Kurt was so jealous and greedy, he was ignorant to the fact that attempting murder of Wend would also place a bounty on his head, as a result. He was also unaware that Wend had already written a will and that Kurt and his family would never receive anything from his estate.

Due to his lack of intelligence, and the inability to see beyond himself, he had no power and ability to actually complete the task himself. This left Kurt to become vulnerable to manipulation from the Head Auditor of the Ministry of Finance, Baron Rückner. Rückner, who was left out of the development of the Savage Lands Project, saw Kurt as his means to dig into the royal purse. Subsequently, he supplies Kurt with a magical ocarina (a type of vessel flute) called the Flute of the Dragon Tamer. The ocarina, when played, would summon a clan of dragons to the player.

Kurt uses the ocarina, believing that it would summon dragons to attack Wend. Instead, unbeknownst to him, the Flute of the Dragon Tamer is actually the cursed Flute of Malice. This flute amplifies the negative energy of malice in the area, in order to turn its player into a monster that can then defeat the person who they have hatred for -- but it also kills them in the process of enacting their vengeance.

The Flute of Malice summoned all of the malice in the area, which gathered rapidly like a cloud of black smoke. Wend's group defended against it, but Kurt was swarmed by it and turned into an undead. As Kurt turned undead, he and the black cloud of malice merged to become a large monster smoke golem. (In the novel, Kurt's co-conspirators were still with him, having never defected earlier, and it was they who got swarmed by the malice, which turned them into zombies They then attacked Kurt, eating him alive and causing him to become undead. The zombified comrades also merged to become a part of the golem.) While the golem was powerful, Wend's and his group were eventually able to destroy it. At the last moment however, as the flute itself crumbled away, a small amount of the black malice hiding within flew away, quickly racing in the direction of the capital.

Having failed to kill Wend, this remaining malice, still containing the hatred of Kurt, redirected that anger toward the scheming Baron Rückner who had provided him the cursed item. Baron Rückner, who was hosting a party with his family and the families of his co-conspirators in the capital, had his party interrupted by the smoke's attack, with party-guests and guards alike turned into zombies who subsequently attacked and killed the Baron. Cardinal Hohenheim, who had received an advanced notice of the possible malice attack from Wend, had arranged for a series of magicians to be on standby, in the event the malice caused an emergency. The magicians were able to ensure the party-guest zombies were completely annihilated before any more damage could done to the capital.

In the aftermath, Artur formally retired and, with Kurt dead, Hermann became the new Knight Baumeister. The kingdom decided to raise the rank for Hermann to baronet, with the possibility of it rising further to baron in the future. Paul was given territory adjacent to Hermann's, and for his work in helping defeat the monster was also elevated to baronet. Despite not participating in the battles with Kurt, Erich and Helmut were also raised to baronet after being told to just accept it by the king, as he believed it would be advantageous to elevate the entire family, as they will all become important members of the kingdom. Finally, Wend was awarded the title of count and Klimt von Armstrong informs him that the king granted him an appropriately significant amount of Savage Lands territory adjacent to Hermann's and Paul's. The king had actually decided to award him the land prior to the incidents with Kurt, as the value and growth of his existing development efforts were progressing well, and with the addition of new territory, those development efforts would naturally grow even further.

Abilities
Kurt is a farmer by trade and has no real skills, and lacks any proper education. He is almost completely illiterate and relies on Amalie and Klaus, the village chief, to handle written communications and book keeping.

Wendelin von Benno Baumeister
In the anime it's pretty much implied that Kurt supposedly never harbored any kind of love or affection for his youngest brother even when Wendelin was still a child. The first time this is shown is when Artur and Kurt were in the study and Kurt mock and insulted Wendelin behind his back when he assumed that Wendelin falsely believed that he was a Magician saying "He probably took a look at his pitiful existence he cried so much he couldn't put it back" (in reality Wendelin did have an affinity for magic but chose to keep it secret to prevent succession issues). When he suspected that Wendelin was a Magician he started to keep a closer eye on him and followed him around for a time due to the fact that he would lose his succession rights if Wendelin was a Magician. When Wendelin declared that he wanted to be an Adventurer, Kurt was actually pleased not because Wendelin found a path for himself but because it meant another obstacle would be out of his way.

Amalie Mainbach
Amalie had apparently been aware that her husband was corrupt, especially after when Wendelin had returned to birthplace which caused Kurt's jealousy to be much more visible.

Kurt himself considers his family to be disposable, even proclaiming to Wendelin that Kurt can always "make a new family" even if Amalie and her children will die because of his own actions.

Ultimately, when Kurt met his demise by his own precipitous actions, Amalie was not mournful afterwards, but rather she cared more about her own children.

Eckart :
The Blacksmith of the Village. He turned into a Zombie along with Kurt when Kurt used the Flute of Grudges. He was purifed by the priest of the captial. In the Anime, he was he was bribed by Wend to go the the Capital to learn to become a better blacksmith.

Trivia

 * Wend tried to give Kurt a compromise out of the King's scheme; by asking for undeveloped land and only providing financial aid, in order to help Kurt look better. However, Kurt's paranoia caused him to decline, despite Wend's sincerity.
 * Everytime a new story abut Wend would make its way to the village, Kurt's hatred for Wend increased.
 * In novel when Kurt makes inappropriate comments to Elise and Erwin, Wend puts him in his place by saying "In the first place, our negotiation partner is Lord Baumeister. Why are you arrogantly interrupting the conversation here? And to cap it off, you treat my fiancée as corrupt priest and my junior commander as punk." In the Anime Wend just takes his party and leaves.