Stadtallendorf is a province.

It is idyllically located in the central Hessian district of Marburg-Biedenkopf and has around 21,000 inhabitants in five districts plus a core town with a lot of half-timbered houses.

In 1938 the farming village became one of the largest European production facilities for explosives with more than 15,000 forced laborers.

Today Stadtallendorf is a small town with several large factories and many immigrants.

There is work here, at the iron foundry and at Ferrero, more work than in Turkey, Bulgaria or Morocco.

There are several churches and a mosque.

And there is the Georg Büchner Comprehensive School.

Andrea Diener

Editor in the features section.

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For several months, the director Maria Speth observed class 6b with her students from nine nations, whose parents came to Central Hesse over the past thirty years. Some speak German from birth, some learned it at school. Others have only just arrived and find that their ability to express themselves lags far behind their urge to communicate, which can be frustrating for everyone involved. In this sixth school year, the course is set in the direction of high school, in the direction of secondary or secondary school. So it is a crucial year for a school career, and schools pay little attention to family immigration biographies. Schools quantify performance in terms of grades.

And it is the last year of class teacher Dieter Bachmann, teacher of mathematics, German, music and everything else that is important in life.

Dieter Bachmann is a career changer, aged sixty-eight, an artist in many disciplines and perhaps someone whom some would disparagingly describe as a do-gooder.

Seventeen years ago he became a teacher by accident because money had to be paid into the house.

Fortunately, it must be said that there should be a lot more coincidences of this kind, because there should be a lot more teachers like Mr. Bachmann.

Part of local history

For three and a half hours you watch him discuss with his students, rephrase things until everyone understands how he asks them questions, challenges them, is disappointed. Often the students sing or make music. In the class there are drums and guitars and one or the other hidden talent. Sometimes it is more important to comfort Regina, whose grandfather died in Russia, than to practice accusative objects. Sometimes you have to talk about how you imagine later life, whether Hasan should become a boxer or a hairdresser or both, or whether you want to get married - because of great love like Stefanie - or for heaven's sake just not and prefer to work like Rabia. And about the fact that Anastasia doesn't always have to be the best and can also grant others success.

Mr. Bachmann's class is also about, but not just about performance. Above all, it creates a space in which everyone can speak openly, express their opinion and learn how to do so without hurting others. It's about realizing what everyone can contribute. Yes, Mr. Bachmann's class is in this sense a utopian space that practices an ideal, more considerate society, but shouldn't that be school, in addition to all the accusative objects and triangular calculations that are certainly also important?

Sometimes the film leaves the school building and integrates the location. We go boxing with Hasan, visit the mosque or, with the school, the memorial that reminds us of the forced labor camp. With teacher Aynur Bal, the children watch a documentary about the first guest workers in Stadtallendorf, who worked hard and tended to stay to themselves, eyed skeptically by local older women under colorful peasant headscarves, and the children of the second generation of immigrants recognize themselves as part of local history. In these moments, Stadtallendorf becomes a whole cosmos, in which the German history of the past century is reflected. And Mr. Bachmann wasn't always Mr. Bachmann either. His family, he tells us once, was once called Koslowski,actually comes from Poland and was Germanised by official decree.

At eye level in the classroom

Surprisingly, despite the length of the film, you don't get bored, because you get to know the students, have to laugh when Cengiz once again expresses his exuberant love for the class and Mr. Bachmann, Stefanie listens to the singing and cheers for Rabia can stay at the school where she feels comfortable or have to move away with her mother after the separation from her father. But there are also loose ends like Ferhan, who usually sits alone wrapped up in a coat and headscarf and carries something around with her that you never find out what exactly it is. You sit at eye level in the classroom and are happy that the film takes the time to observe all of this without having to emphasize it or comment. Who believesTo be able to make a final judgment on immigration or integration based on these children is on the wrong track. All is not good and all is not bad. This is a pleasantly balanced position in an otherwise often heated debate.

At the end it goes on a class trip to the pony farm.

They all sing, discuss, argue and make up one last time, Hasan's birthday, Stefanie and Rabia are baking a cake, Mr. Bachmann has a present up his sleeve.

Then they part ways.

The children are now being taught by colleagues like Ms. Bal and Önder Cavdar, the “only real Turk here”, as he once said, teasingly.

And even if Mr. Bachmann's departure is a loss for students and school: you know that the children are in good hands with them.