In 1978, the portrait of the miner Alphons S. was made: In eight episodes, the documentary film, which won the Adolf Grimme Award, tells a life story that is at the same time contemporary history: Alphons Stiller reports on his childhood and youth, his time in Germany in the 1920s, as an anarchist and left-wing socialist, as a farm worker on the estates of Mecklenburg, but above all as a clever and alert contemporary witness of everyday history in the years 1906 to 1939. The oral history project, which was still unusual at the time, was realised with simple technical means and takes "people seriously all around (...) with their whole life story, in their whole way of thinking, speaking, expressing themselves" (Hübner/Voss). Part 1: Early childhood in the Saar region (1906-1910): The domestic circumstances / Of the early death of the mother / The stepmother / Resettlement in the Ruhr area. In the Ruhr (from 1910): Of life in the colonies / The "Pollacks" / The rural habits brought with them School days and the First World War (1912-1918): How the children experienced the war at school / Of war enthusiasm and the fallen sons / Of war bonds and black-white-red nails / Of necessity being the mother of invention