This is one of Stifter's great epic works, a most sensitive account of the formative years in the life of Heinrich, a student of natural sciences, born into a bourgeois environment, but influenced and gently guided by a nobleman, the old Baron von Risach. It is in fact the baron's own reminiscences which give the book its title. Comparable in some ways to Gottfried Keller's Der grune Heinrich this novel, nevertheless, reflects Stifter's own moral values, his ethical thinking and his deep reverence for nature.

Set around the events of the succession struggle of 1142 in medieval Bohemia the main character, Witiko, the traditional founder of the Rosenberg Family, searches for the Right, finds it and his beloved, while never losing touch with the common folk. His quest is amid the panoramic backdrop of national Bohemian politics and history, with his fate paralleling that of the acknowledged rightful duke, Wladislaw, who is also seeking the path of justice. Witiko is considered one of the most significant German historical novels of the Nineteenth Century.