When the Nazis took power, the Jewish artist Leo Haas (1901-1983) was arrested in his Czechoslovakian hometown. He spent the next six years in different concentration camps and became known for the paintings he did in the Theresienstadt camp. This film presents Haas as a political artist and resistance fighter and celebrates him as a socialist caricaturist dedicated to the GDR.
Around 1500, a gentleman enters the barber's shop of a small town. He throws a purse and his dagger on the table and demands in a harsh tone that his beard be shorn. The gentleman promises to pay the master in gold for a perfect shave, but if his skin is even scratched, he will have to pay for it with his life...
A soldier returns from the war. As he has nowhere to stay, he moves to hell. There he is ordered by the devil to stoke the fire under the cauldrons and add coals. When he looks into the cauldron, he sees his captain, the marshal and the king sitting in it. They beg the soldier to help them to freedom. But the soldier remembers what these three had done to him on earth and seals the cauldron so tightly that the captain, marshal and king can never return. Now the soldier returns to earth reassured.
