In August 1914, amidst the public ecstasy surrounding the impending war, Hans Gastl, the seventeen year-old son of a Munich bürger, makes a decision: he will not take part in this war. This resolution signifies a turning point in his life; a farewell to his class and his family. His notions of "transformation" are still nebulous, but are nevertheless linked with a sensible life in a just society. The resolution does not come spontaneously: since he was a child, Gastl, the son of a senior public prosecutor, has rebelled against the decadence and mere appearance of morality in his parent's household. In relating to his schoolmates Feck and Freyschlag, he was constantly torn between admiring their courage and abhorring their evil pranks. He thinks about his friendship with Löwenstein, who is a Jew, and Hartinger, the boy from the working class, and about his tragically ending love for the prostitute Fanny.