The novel adopts ideas from Ernst Eckstein's Der Besuch im Karzer (published 1875) and was partly inspired by personal accounts of Spoerl's own schooldays as well as his son's pranks at school.

While they exchange nostalgic stories about their schooldays, the successful young writer Dr. Johannes Pfeiffer realizes he missed out on something because he was taught at home and never attended school.

Eventually, he falls in love with the headmaster's daughter and discloses his identity after provoking the teachers into expelling him from school.

His friends' nostalgic recollections of their schooldays convince him that he missed out on something and he decides to go undercover as a gymnasium student in the fictional small town Babenberg.

This makes her the bad girl of the story in accordance with the ideologies of the times reproving emancipated and sinful women like Marion.

[3] She eventually loses Pfeiffer when he falls in love with innocent blonde Eva, Headmaster Knauer's daughter, who embodies the ideal image of a proper "girl next door".