This woodcut's black-and-white starkness mirrors that of its subject matter. Before the disempowered royal couple on the right, Death juggles the orb, crown, and scepter he has snatched from them. By showing these once eternal symbols of power reduced to juggler's toys, the artist suggests the destruction of kingdoms and nations that occurred by the end of World War I.

Rohlfs was already sixty years old when he began working in woodcut and linoleum cut, creating some 185 works between 1908/9 and 1926. Encounters with both Edvard Munch and Emil Nolde persuaded him to take up these media, which saw a great revival in the early twentieth century.