Hamburg edition of the works. A reader-friendly study edition, all texts reviewed and compared with the original typescripts and first prints. Each volume includes a detailed commentary on the history of creation and reception. Siegfried Lenz's most famous novel, his opus magnum about Siggi Jepsen, an inmate of a facility for difficult adolescents, his essay on the "Joy of Duty," and his reckoning with his father, the village policeman, and his disreputable role in Nazi Germany in relation to his painter friend Nansen. Published in 1968, "The German Lesson," translated into more than 20 languages and sold over 2.2 million times, is a milestone of 20th-century German literature.