A seething mass of ten armed figures is barricaded within a claustrophobic space that might be a rooftop or a terrace at night. Words lifted from political leaflets abound: "Verbrü[derung]" (fraternization); "wir sind tot" (we are dead). This large lithograph with graphite overdrawing is a working proof for plate 10 in Beckmann's famous portfolio Die Hölle (Hell) of 1919, among his most scathing testimonies to the turmoil that ensued immediately after World War I.

The image relates to the bloody events that Beckmann witnessed during his trip to Berlin in March 1919, when the city was in the throes of the March Revolution. Some 1,200 people were killed. A few weeks earlier, the Socialists' Spartacus League uprising had been suppressed and their leaders, Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht, brutally killed. "One last battle remains to be fought" was a slogan from the group's leaflet of January 1, 1919. This is the battle Beckmann evokes.

In the final image in the portfolio, the artist changed night to day.