The author recounts the experiences of the young Otto before and after World War II. Raised in a sheltered environment before the war in Stettin and Wolgast, he was brutally thrust into the chaos of war. After fleeing through various stations in Mecklenburg, he spent his youth in Wolgast. Shortly after the war, his mother and grandmother died from malnutrition and exhaustion, leaving him and his sister Helga as orphans. His father returned home from the war only late. The 20th century allowed Otto to experience several social systems. Growing up in the Weimar Republic, spending his early youth under Hitler's dictatorship, then witnessing the DDR's attempt at a socialist order, and finally returning to a bourgeois democracy. His passion for sailing with his friend Manfred led to his first experiences with the fairer sex.