For the teacher Josef Blau, his students are the greatest threat that he can only keep at bay through strict discipline. However, his paranoid behavior is not limited to the school; in his everyday life, Blau also feels threatened by anarchy and moral decay. In his ruthless struggle against this, the teacher increasingly becomes entangled in an inextricable web of depression and brutality. Hermann Ungar was part of the circle of Prague writers Franz Kafka, Max Brod, and Ernst Weiss, whose works have noticeably influenced the darkly menacing novel published in 1927.