The protagonist, Katharina Wüllner-like many other women who were born shortly after the turn of the century-married just after the First World War and then had to send her husband and sons to fight in World War II. Her life spans the regimes of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Weimar Republic, Hitler's Reich, the Allied Occupation, and finally the Federal Republic. Her story is in many ways typical of twentieth-century German life-but at the same time, it is the story of a hesitant, almost fearful emancipation. For although her life is determined by political events and other external circumstances, Katharina Wüllner does, all the same, begin to try to make her own way.