Günter de Bruyn tells the life story of the romantic poet Zacharias Werner. Zacharias Werner, one of the few playwrights of the Romantic era, abducted his first wife from a brothel and converted to Catholicism after three failed marriages. Restlessly, Werner traveled across half of Europe. August Wilhelm Iffland was one of his supporters in Berlin, while Johann Wolfgang Goethe staged one of his plays in Weimar. In Aschaffenburg, Zacharias Werner was eventually ordained as a priest and found solace in preaching and missionary work. With both sensitivity and sobriety, Günter de Bruyn narrates the story of a driven man who increasingly loses sight of the world and people – and thus his own art. A disturbing, sad tale about loneliness and delusion, love and literature.