Harald Hildebrand experienced three political systems—National Socialism as a child, then socialism in the GDR, and later the market economy of the Federal Republic of Germany. Born in 1938 as the son of a farmer in Lower Silesia, he learned what it meant for his parents to farm and produce food under economic and political pressure in the postwar period. This retrospective is a central theme of his book. As a language mediator working in Spanish, English, and Portuguese, international cooperation took him to numerous countries in Latin America, such as Cuba, Peru, Nicaragua, and Chile, as well as Africa, including Mozambique, Angola, Egypt, and Ethiopia, both in the service of the GDR and later the FRG. He recounts encounters with Fidel Castro and Samora Machel.