In Wer mit den Wölfen heult, wird Wolf (Whoever Runs With the Pack Becomes a Wolf, 1996), his third autobiographical novel, Ludwig Harig repeatedly reflects upon the Zeitgeist defining the Federal Republic of Germany during the 1950s. His recurring preoccupation is the contradictory outline retrospectively presented by the era. “Zu keiner anderen Zeit lagen die großen und die kleinen Dinge weiter auseinander als Anfang der fünfziger Jahre” (at no other time were the important and the small matters further apart than at the start of the fifties), he writes:

Setting a pragmatic Lebensgefühl against broader political developments, this passage illustrates a disjunction between the personal and the political, between life history and history that frames the diverse elements of the novel.