In this first installment, a large part of the narrative tension generated by DÖblin resides in the sharp contrast between the efforts of the Spartacist leader Karl Liebknecht to mobilize the proletariat against the established power and, on the other hand, the pacts that the leader of the assembly of The representatives of the people try to establish with the high military command. A true fresco of the social and political environment of a decisive episode in German history, the 1918 revolution, which precipitated the change from the German Reich monarchy to the Weimar Republic.