Semi-autobiographical film with Fritz Kortner and running along the same lines as Peter Lorre′s "Der Verlorene" ("The Lost"), which is the most significant, psychologically most coherent film-document of German re-emigration. Professor Mauthner, after many years of exile (having emigrated in 1933 to the USA), returns to Germany in 1948. He can in fact return to his teaching post, but the rejection and petty intrigues of his reactionary colleagues and students make his work almost unbearable. Just as he seems to be getting through to them with his humanist efforts and conviction, he dies – lost and lonely.