The rebellious teacher, Franz Faber, tells of his colleague over three nights the story of how his struggle with life, love, and faith.

"For like the tree imposes its way on the seeds which it releases; like the wave dies off into the next to repeat itself: so too do the child of men inherit the chains of those who produce them, and thousands upon thousands grow and wither to no avail like the grass on the graves."

Hermann Stehr (1864-1940) was a Silesian author of over thirty novels and novellas. He was awarded the Bauernfeld Prize (1910), the Fastenrath Prize (1919), the Schiller Prize (1919), the Rathenau Prize (1930), the Wartburg Rose (1932), the Goethe Medal for Art and Science (1932) and the Goethe Prize of Frankfurt-am-Main (1933), and appointed as a founding member of the Prussian Literary Academy (1926). He was also nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times.

"Germany possesses in Hermann Stehr an artist of profound clarity. That which is in motion in his works, and that which stands still, seems eternal. His people are creatures who have nothing finished in themselves, but still seem to exist at the dawn of creation, unreleased in God's iron forging hand. And there is still no plentiful sunlight over their world. ... They suffer, as it were, the act of creation." - Gerhart Hauptmann, Nobel Laureate in Literature (1912)