Set at the beginning of the third millennium, the drama unfolds around Ernst Huggs, an aging and ruthless trust magnate who controls the global economy through absolute financial domination, weaponized commerce, and the elimination of sovereign states. Huggs views himself as the ultimate ruler of a unified earth, orchestrating the fates of nations and labor forces alike with ruthless mathematical precision. His entire existence is dedicated to preparing his preferred son, Robert, to inherit this colossal empire, while casting aside his other children and treating human lives as mere variables in a grand economic equation.
The core conflict ignites when Robert returns after a decade in the wilderness, having witnessed the immense human suffering, starvation, and systematic destruction caused by his father's relentless industrial warfare. Unlike his father, Robert possesses a conscience and resolves to dismantle the monopoly from within, sparking a fierce ideological battle between the cold calculus of corporate power and the urgent human desire for freedom. As Robert aligns himself with the working classes and organizes a mass strike to cripple the trust, the magnate's empire begins to fracture from internal resistance.
Meanwhile, Ernst's unstable and bitterly resentful younger son, Ernst Junior, plots the complete destruction of the system through violence and arson, representing a nihilistic craving for total annihilation. As the global economic machinery races toward an apocalyptic third world war commanded by secret executive orders, the tension escalates to a breaking point involving tragic sacrifices, including the murder of Huggs's sensitive daughter, Gertrud. The play delves deeply into the philosophical crisis of modern humanity trapped between mechanical efficiency and spiritual starvation.
In the final stages, the absolute control of the trust is shattered not by violent revolution, but by a sudden, sweeping refusal of the soldiers and laborers worldwide to participate in mutual slaughter, rendering the magnate's final war orders obsolete. The narrative retreats to a remote island sanctuary where the surviving characters face the reckoning of their past actions. Although the magnate ultimately accepts his downfall and surrenders to a new world order based on labor and mutual cooperation rather than tyranny, the legacy of the old greed leaves an indelible, haunting scar on the survivors.
