The series Rattenkönig (King of Rats) emerged during several journeys to the Baltic Sea, the Tatra mountains in Poland and the Rhine and Main rivers in Germany. Humans and other creatures and their struggles for life — wearing-out, friction, self-preservation, not wanting to surrender — grow from a personal view into a universal one. Ludwig Rauch calls it a study of the absurdity and contradiction of life, the beauty of imperfection and the grace of anger.