Rummelplatz is about young people who are uprooted after the collapse of Germany at the end of the Second World War. The desolate state of society, the survival of many old Nazis, the rise of new political castes and the pursuit of profit by old and new capitalists paralyzes them. They are robbed of all prospects for the future and the air they breathe. In the "Wismut", this huge uranium mining operation in the Ore Mountains, where Bräunig himself worked as a miner, they meet, the war returnees and the soldiers of fortune, the rebellious and the idealists, German miners and Soviet shaft management: Christian Kleinschmidt, the professor's son, who has to "probation in production" before his studies. Peter Loose, a rough but honest fellow. Nickel, the convinced functionary, Ruth Fischer, the young activist and feminist, and a few others who, four years after the end of the war, lured by high wages, a comparatively good food supply and the atmosphere of adventure that was inherent in men's life in the mass quarters, sacrificed their best years to Wismut AG. Werner Bräunig has given such an unvarnished picture of the early years in East and West - hard work, shortages, wrong turns, old shafts, setbacks, confinement, claustrophobia. Alcohol, prostitutes, the omnipresent Russian soldiers - that the novel came under official criticism from Ulbricht and Honecker and publication became impossible.