Expressionist tragedy in blank verse that inveighs against the conservatism of law and order and strongly protests war.
The play opens at nightfall beside a graveyard on a hilltop, overlooking a battlefield where a mother's favourite son has fallen. While the mother, her daughter, and her youngest son dig a grave, the war continues to rage in the valley below; eventually her two remaining sons are brought up in chains, the eldest for sexual excesses that have marred the army's honour and the younger for desertion. The traditional ideals of the mother are pitted against the very different values of her children. They bitterly accuse her of endowing them with life without hope of life.
The eldest son, after trying to commit incest with, his sister and his mother, jumps from the high cemetery wall to his death.
When the soldiers come to take away his corpse, the mother - having undergone a spiritual transformation - stands in their way, snatches the commander's staff, symbol of power, and cries out for rebellion against outmoded values. The commander kills her, but the soldiers, intoxicated by her call for a new race of men, follow the youngest son in a march against war, and they are joined by the commander.