The title references Geert Mak's Dutch family history: "My Father's Century," which is a representative social and mental history of the Netherlands. This, along with Walter Kempowski's "German Chronicle," serves as the backdrop for the very different family biography of Rudi Kunze (1925 - 2001) and Gerda Kunze (1926 - 2010), which is both a plot suitable for a Hollywood film and a characteristic German story set in the half-century of the world civil war.