Egon Günther

In the middle of the 18th Century, the Ruster family immigrates to America. The father, a former farm laborer, leads a hard life as a settler along with his family. One day the nine year-old George, his second-youngest son, is kidnapped by Iroquois. He is taken in by an Indian family in the place of a deceased son and receives the name "Blue Bird." The boy has homesickness and difficulties accustoming to the customs of the Indians.

The armouring soldier and writer Werner Bertin is ordered to the Western Front to France during the First World War. The use before Verdun - with all the horrors of war in the period 1916/1917 - brings a fundamental change of consciousness for the academic from Berlin. The intellectual devoted to bravery by fate develops into a disappointed but rebellious being. He sees more and more the injustices of warlike conflicts and their social causes.