Bernhard Seeger

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In 1960, 400,000 farmers are forced to join the LPG. After the forced collectivization, Thomas, son of the experienced LPG chairman Rothardt, is delegated to the Oderbruch. However, he is unable to cope with the unwilling farmers in the countryside and his task of improving their work. He meets with incomprehension from his father and a conflict arises between the two.

For years, the carpenter Tillmann Rutenschneider has moved around. In 1932, at the age of thirty, he returns to his village in the Mark Brandenburg with a foreign wife. He builds a house and starts a family. It wasn't long before he became a victim of the new racial laws. His house is set on fire, his wife and child burn to death in the flames. He himself is sent to a concentration camp. After liberation, he returned to his home village, started a new family and built a new house. He joins forces with resettlers to form a cooperative, enforcing the land reform in his very own way. Tillmann falls into debt, gets into trouble and ends up in prison. He has to sell his house to pay off his debts. Released from prison, Tillmann Rutenschneider makes his way back to his village.

In the late summer of 1958, party secretary Ernst Wollni is sent from Berlin to the village of Schwarzwalde to help set up an agricultural cooperative. In the village he meets his childhood friend Fritz Grimmberger again. Their friendship is put to the test as Grimmberger opposes collectivization. Nevertheless, Wollni manages to motivate the villagers and get the LPG going. Grimmberger, however, ruins himself by going it alone. When his daughter Helga also wants to leave him and study in the city, he realizes his mistake. Grimmberger and Wollni reconcile at the village festival.