It introduced the character Etzel Andergast, whose questioning of the judgment of his cold-hearted jurist father and whose own detective work eventually prove the innocence of a man his father had condemned. Etzel became a symbol of post-World War I German youth by rejecting the authority of the past and finding his own truth by trial-and-error, doggedly following elusive clues. This work was extended into a trilogy including Etzel Andergast (1931) and Joseph Kerkhovens dritte Existenz (1934; Kerkhoven’s Third Existence). Mein Weg als Deutscher und Jude (1921; My Life as German and Jew) is Wassermann’s autobiography.