In the first book, it is the maternal grandparents, the parents, the middle-class small-town residents, and the still-childlike author who experience the pre-war years, the First World War, and the beginning of the Weimar Republic. The perspective is limited, the values are bourgeois, and the sentiment remains patriotic. However, the awareness of living in a time of decline leads the grandfather, Julius Krumm, a former gunsmith and now an innkeeper who resembles his Württemberg king with his beard and hat, to reflect on his own existence. Rejecting the illusion of life, he is content with what he is, yet he longs for the glory of accolades denied to him, which education, status, and the lifestyle of his musically gifted daughter could provide.