Dresden 1919 - the city resembles a magnifying glass, reflecting the situation of the emerging Weimar Republic: class fighters meet social democrats and a monarchist bourgeoisie. War cripples and severely wounded individuals shape daily life just as much as a vibrant artistic scene. Civil war looms at any moment. From historical testimonies and the memories of those involved, Freya Klier creates an impressive panorama of those years and connects it to our time by drawing parallels to today's society. "Over Europe in 1919 lie hunger and deep exhaustion - both among the victors and the vanquished. The Habsburg multi-national state has disintegrated into its components, and Germany, as the biggest loser of the World War, is being dictated a peace treaty that plunges people across the country into anger and depression. From the East, Bolshevism threatens, while in the West, the victorious powers occupy German territories. How will this continue? No one wants to take responsibility for this war - least of all those who are to blame for it." Freya Klier gives voice to people who were there at the time: she quotes from the diaries of Käthe Kollwitz and Victor Klemperer, and records memories from Erich Kästner, Ernst Toller, Oskar Kokoschka, and Marie Stritt. The twelve-year-old Jewish girl Johanna Lindemann vividly describes what child poverty meant during the war and post-war period. She is still unaware of the dramatic fate that awaits her. Much of what happens after the end of World War I converges in Dresden. In the metropolises of the emerging Weimar Republic, the moods are very different. Only in comparison with the events in Munich, Berlin, or Cologne can the upheaval of the Elbe Valley in 1919 be described. Why are the Freikorps here not as brutal as in the Ruhr area or Bavaria?.