The English translation by Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins, titled The German Lesson, was first published in London by Macdonald & Co. in 1971 and later by New Directions in 1986.

Siggi Jepsen (the first-person narrator), an inmate of a juvenile detention center, is forced to write an essay with the title "The Joy of Duty."

In the essay, Siggi describes his youth in Nazi Germany where his father, the "most northerly police officer in Germany," does his duty, even when he is ordered to debar his old childhood friend, the expressionist painter Max Nansen, from his profession, because the Nazis banned expressionism as "degenerate art" (entartete Kunst).

Following the end of World War II, Jepsen senior is interned for a short time and later reinstalled as a policeman in rural Schleswig-Holstein.

The film stars Tobias Moretti as Max Nansen and Ulrich Noethen as Jens Jepsen, with Johanna Wokalek, Louis Hofmann and Sonja Richter in further roles.