 In the characters of the novel (Roquairol, Schoppe, Gaspard, Liane, Linda) Jean Paul crystallizes various European controversies of the year 1800.In the end, all characters but the hero come to grief as a result of their one-sidedness.With Schoppe, the idealistic philosophy of Fichte is criticised; in Roquairol the aesthete and "l'art pour l'art" (Jean Paul's conception of the Weimar ideal); Gaspard encapsulates cold political calculation; Liane, a fanatical religiosity (pietism, the Moravian Church); in Linda the purportedly unseemly hubris of emancipated women.