"The Return" was written in 1909 for the literary magazine Die Neue Rundschau and is one of the lesser-known narratives of Esse, published for the first time in the Greek language.

It is the story of a cosmopolitan man, an entrepreneur, who, after years in America and Russia, decides to return and settle permanently in his birth town, somewhere in the Black Forest. There, he is welcomed with great enthusiasm, mainly because of the fortune he has acquired in the meantime. However, when he starts showing interest in a widow, who becomes the subject of gossip in the small town, the situation gradually turns around and he becomes the target himself, along with the woman, being accused of immorality. In the end, he decides to abandon his homeland for the second time, its suffocating conventions and hypocrisy.

In 2012, it was made into a film, directed by Jo Baier.