The German Lesson

Siggi Jepsen, in a juvenile detention centre after the war, is set an essay for his German lesson: the joys of duty. He cannot write a word, is locked in a cell, and there his childhood comes back. His father is the policeman of a village in the north, and in 1943 he was given the job of serving a painting ban on Nansen, a painter and a friend of the family. Siggi, who is supposed to be helping his father, starts hiding the forbidden pictures instead. Christian Schwochow adapted the film from Siegfried Lenz's 1968 novel. Lenz modelled Nansen on the painter Emil Nolde. That Nolde was himself a member of the Nazi Party, and that his work was nevertheless declared degenerate and banned, has since been extensively documented.