On several narrative levels this poetical documentary film interlinks the fate of New York artist Jimmy Ernst and his parents Max Ernst and Louise Straus with the story of the Augustin print shop in Glückstadt. In 1935 – Jimmy's parents have already fled to Paris – the Augustin family hire the 15-year-old as an typesetting apprentice. He learns to typeset foreign languages including Chinese and Arabic as well as runic characters and cuneiform. He develops a fascination for characters that will influence his entire oeuvre. It is only with the help of the Augustin family that Jimmy successfully flees to the USA in 1938. His father is able to follow him at a later date, but his mother is deported to Auschwitz and killed. The Augustin print shop today: Photos and and contemporary witnesses awaken the abandoned print shop from its slumber. The images are underlined by passages taken from the memoirs of Jimmy Ernst – read by Burghart Klaußner – and the music of sound artist Ulrike Haage. The camera captures graphic characters, mysterious symbols and strange alphabets. A fascinating insight, crowned by the photographs of Candida Höfer.