The German Lesson

“A person who doesn’t forget is like a person who carries a stone in his pocket.”

Part 1: The Assignment

Siggi Jepsen, a young inmate at a juvenile detention center, is given a school assignment: write an essay on “The Joys of Duty.” Instead, he begins recounting his childhood in Nazi Germany, focusing on his father, Jens Ole Jepsen, a police officer blindly devoted to enforcing a ban on his friend Nansen’s paintings.

Part 2: The Ban

Siggi’s father, representing the Nazi regime, is ordered to confiscate the works of expressionist painter Max Ludwig Nansen, an old friend. Despite their past bond, Jepsen enforces the ban with fanatical zeal, surveilling Nansen and seizing his art. Siggi, caught between loyalty to his father and admiration for Nansen, secretly helps the artist hide his paintings.

Part 3: The War’s Shadow

As World War II progresses, Siggi’s village becomes increasingly oppressive. His father’s rigid sense of duty isolates the family, while Nansen’s defiance grows. Siggi’s brother Klaas deserts the army and is hunted, deepening the family’s turmoil. Siggi’s moral conflict intensifies as he witnesses the destructive consequences of blind obedience.

Part 4: The Aftermath

After the war, Siggi’s father refuses to acknowledge his complicity, clinging to his warped interpretation of duty. Siggi, now in detention, reflects on how unchecked authority and ideological fanaticism corrupted his father and fractured his community. His essay becomes a confession of guilt, trauma, and the burden of memory.

Key Ideas

• The dangers of blind obedience to authority
• The moral conflict between duty and conscience
• The psychological toll of post-war guilt
• The role of art as resistance
• The generational divide in confronting the past