The 17-year-old Rolf Hellhoff (pseudonym of the author) from Berlin's Neu-Westend escapes the war and the forced community in a Hitler Youth camp in the spring of 1945, becoming "Schlattenschammes," an indispensable jack-of-all-trades in the reconstruction of the theater "Tribüne." The theater becomes his world, and the world becomes a theater that allows him to ignore hunger, exhaustion, housing shortages, the black market, and the dull resentments in his surroundings. It is "the time of beautiful distress" (Erich Kuby), during which this story of a young man transforms into an éducation sentimentale. Created against an autobiographical background around 1968, this portrayal of the times and manners has been edited from the author's estate.