THE DESERTER

Hamburg in the Twenties of the 20th century. The industrial actions and class struggles become acute. Conciliatory trade unionists from the SPD try to stop another strike movement and at first receive unexpected support from the KPD-agitator. He wants to end the strike until an “internationalist commitment” has been fulfilled – meaning the building of a ship for the USSR. During the strike, which is unsuccessful in the end, there are bloody encounters with the police and strike-breakers. Worker Karl Renner withdraws discouraged, but is sent to Leningrad by his party group as a delegate with educational intention. He doesn’t return to Hamburg from there, though, but takes up work in the “Neue Diesel“-factory. Shattered, Karl Renner reads in the papers that his KPD-cell leader has been murdered in Hamburg. Therefore he decides to use self-criticism in front of the whole Soviet worker’s collective: He no longer wants to be a “deserter” and returns to the class struggle-front in Hamburg.