FOURTEEN YEARS HAVE PASSED since the end of the war.

The gramophone whines on an early morning: “We’d be good, and not so rough, if only circumstances weren't so tough.”

Max shouts through the door, “Turn off that damned noise box! I’m so sick of ‘we would be gooood!’ We’re crude and without feeling from the start. With little understanding, and don't add to what we do have. You let your sympathy be aroused by a few fur-coated socialists. It's only a song. You should have been at the Institute for Politics yesterday. Then you would have seen how far gone these youngsters, these unripe radishes, are. They don't understand anything — and their ‘will to be gooood’! Bullshit! It's not even political. They’re only political on the surface; behind that they’re just hyenas, barking out the parties's songs.”

Klara mediates, as usual: “Fine. Just put on another record. Let's not fight about politics again.”

Her good will is for nothing, however. Her brothers and sisters just start shouting at each other again: “Maybe ‘Green is the heath, the heath is green’ or ‘The Danube's pleasant waves’?”

From a behind a pile of books in the corner, Peter, at 31 the second oldest but still the quietest of the siblings, almost whispers: “vivere non necesse est — if people could only hear you. It's not worth it for a fighting horde to live and sacrifice itself over and over again, like the ancients did. No one has any respect for anyone else, and nineteen-year-olds are writing off even those only five or ten years older. No, it's not worth being alive.”

“Then just drop dead, old boy. You’ll have the thanks of a grateful Fatherland.”

Susi yells at this last, especially crude, brother. “Somebody really ought to give it to you, Jürgen. You’re just an upstart, wet behind the ears, too lazy to work, but happy to take our money and then be a jerk. Your family feeling is getting on my nerves. I’m going out.”

“Say hello to your boyfriend and bring me home some money!”

Susi simply adds, “Jürgen, the born pimp,” carefully touches up her wind-blown hair, tosses a funny little thing on her head that's trying to be a cap, pastels her face, and paints a sweet little cherry onto her lips.