A treatise on love and desire tainted by harsh reality of capitalism, in which submission to the laws of lust-as-commerce is played out by five prostitutes and their pimp, who pits them against one another so that they are incapable of standing up to him collectively.
Germany, 1928: a pupil attends a Greek lesson in which the head of his school, Oberstudiendirektor Himmler, takes over from the teacher. Himmler is in fact the father of the eponymous murderer, Heinrich Himmler. The film is based on Alfred Andersch's last story.
