Hoffmann (Scheicher) is an ambitious ethnology student in Berlin. When he meets the interpreter (Jazama) of the Herero and Nama delegation from German South West Africa on their visit to Germany, he develops an intense interest in the population. His experiences come to contradict the common evolutionist, racially based theories he has been confronted with up until that point. When it comes to the civil war, he is on the ground, travelling around and collecting artefacts that will form part of the collection of the modern-day Berlin Ethnological Museum. Hoffmann witnesses the cruelties of war, but he himself crosses moral boundaries when he agrees to collect Herero and Nama skeletons for research purposes.