Vienna 1918/1919: The former officer Georg Vittorin cannot forget the humiliations he endured as a prisoner of war at the hands of the Russian camp commander Seljukow, and he decides to return as a vengeful figure. A dramatic chase begins, taking him through the Soviet Union, to Constantinople, Rome, Milan, Paris, and beyond, until it ultimately culminates in Vienna with the long-awaited "duel without witnesses." This story of a war returnee was first published in 1928 as a serialized novel in the "Berliner Illustrierten Zeitung" and became one of the most well-known books of its time at the end of the Weimar Republic.