This volume brings together Heimito von Doderer's texts from the time of his captivity from 1916 to 1920, as well as his works from the 1920s. In the early sketches and stories that reflect camp life while also poetically evoking distant Vienna, one can already find thematic threads that would later unfold in novels such as "Strudlhofstiege," "Die Dämonen," and "Grenzwald." The works from the 1920s also hint at characters and situations that would appear in his major novels. Doderer's distinctive descriptive style and "Doderesque" stylistic devices, as well as central motifs for Doderer, such as liberation and entanglement through the landscape and the theme of becoming human, are already recognizable.