A man, born in 1889 - the year Hitler and Chaplin were born, the Second International and the Eiffel Tower - died in 1954, kept a diary from 1919 and 1953, three and a half decades. The man was a principal, so the diary is a school chronicle. During this long period, he always worked in the same small Altmark village. So his notes are also a piece of village history. In a time of new life corrections and lies, ruptures and repressions, the film follows the teacher through "great" and bad years of German history: Inflation, Hindenburg, the Zeppelin, the Harz Mountains and Hamburg, the Day of Potsdam and Greater Germany, storms and collecting old materials in peace and war, post-war worries and school reform. One man educated generations of children in his one-class school and released them into the world. Not a German career like that of a grand admiral or captain of industry. German history from below...