It is set in the world of German business and follows the flexible middle-class man Reinhold Schmidt as he navigates the contradictions and hazards of the recently unified Germany.
The novel is divided into six books and was originally published by Staackmann [de] in three volumes.
[1][2] The novel deals with themes related to German unification and the tensions between an older generation attached to the liberalism of the 1848 revolutions, represented by Reinhold's uncle, and a younger generation that embraces the Realpolitik of Otto von Bismarck, regarded by the protagonist as a uniquely German fusion of realism and idealism.
The title creates a parallel between the 1872 Baltic Sea flood and the 1873 stock market crash.
[3] The literary scholar Jeffrey L. Sammons called the book "the major fictional treatment of the financial crash of the 1870s as a harbringer of the predatory but erratic capitalism that was to become characteristic of the Reich".