This book arose without Werner Mahler's knowledge, on a secret “mission”, and was handed to him and all guests at his birthday celebration. It is astonishingly the first book (apart from smaller booklets from the 1970s and 80s) devoted only to his pictures. The oak in the pictures stands at the end of the Mahlers' garden, behind which the Brandenburg forest begins. For more than four decades he has photographed it through the seasons.