The war belonged to the adults; we wandered around very lonely in between. Ernst grows up sheltered in a small town in southern Germany during the late imperial era, and his world initially seems intact. However, society is actually marked by the fundamental conflict lines of the time: anti-Semitism, political struggles between the left and right, the poor and the rich. The war initially bridges all these divides, but the longer it lasts, the clearer it becomes how questionable the jingoistic patriotism is and how fragile the previous order has become. Glaeser connects the external events with the inner life of his protagonist, who must fight for sexual experiences as well as his own opinion against the prudish world of his fathers and their hollow moralism: The war is our parents. When Glaeser's novel is published in 1928, it strikes a chord with the times.