Glückskind mit Vater

Ironically humorous, touching, without sentimentality or sarcasm, Christoph Hein tells an unparalleled yet exemplary life over more than sixty years of German conditions. What does a son, referred to as "lucky child" by his mother, owe to his father? Since his birth in 1945, Konstantin Boggosch has been trying to step out of the shadow of his war criminal father, who is now deceased, while living in the emerging GDR: He adopts a different name, wants to become a Foreign Legionnaire in Marseille, re-enters the GDR shortly after the Wall is built, is not allowed to take his Abitur there, yet, taking advantage of fortunate circumstances - a lucky child indeed - he almost becomes the principal of a secondary school in the late GDR years. In the end, he realizes that an emancipation from both general and personal history is doomed to fail. Through such a connection of past and present, it becomes clear.