The Crammer

Germany in the mid-1950s: Dr. Seidel (Rühmann) is a successful teacher at a high school in a provincial town. Old fashioned and dutiful as he is, he takes on the challenge to teach a graduating class at a big city high school, when asked by the governmental school inspector. On arrival at his new working place he is hit by a student while trying to settle a quarrel among youngsters in the schoolyard. The beginning looks like an omen: his new class proves to be an unruly gang. While trying to establish discipline, Dr. Seidel makes himself quite unpopular; he even becomes the target of intimidation attempts by a former student (Löwitsch), who is now a gang leader with criminal ambitions. However Dr. Seidel is made of stern stuff and step by step wins the respect first of one student (Kraus), then of all others, and he learns to respect the students. In contrast, gang leader Engelmann loses his following.

In a side story Dr. Seidel courts the older sister (Frydtberg) of a student but his advances are unsuccessful, so he falls back to a co-teacher (Löbel) living next door in the same boardinghouse. Another resident at the boardinghouse is a wrestler (Fröbe) who teaches him wrestling skills in exchange for literacy lessons.

• Heinz Rühmann as Dr. Hermann Seidel
• Wera Frydtberg as Vera Bork
• Gert Fröbe as Freddy Blei
• Peter Kraus as Achim Bork
• Bruni Löbel as Frl. Selinski
• Ernst Fritz Fürbringer as School inspector Wagner
• Hans Leibelt as Headmaster Wiesbacher
• Franz-Otto Krüger as Headmaster Gaspari
• Klaus Löwitsch as Harry Engelmann
• Ernst Reinhold [de] as Martin Rössler
• Michael Verhoeven as Peter Wieland
• Peter Vogel as Eduard Neureiter
• Axel Scholtz [de] as Axel
• Hans Zander [de] as Rudi Bär

• Reimer, Robert C. & Reimer, Carol J. The A to Z of German Cinema. Scarecrow Press, 2010.

• The Crammer at IMDb