A German woman and a former French prisoner of war live in 1950s Germany. Instead of playing a role in rebuilding her country, the heroine remains preoccupied with her personal affairs.
The unsuccessful inventor Leo Bergert is the awkwardness in person: Everything he tackles goes wrong. His latest project, the development of a totally new fuel goes, clearly failed. Now he is deeply in debt, and the bank will immediately return their money. As also leaves him his Dauerverlobte and also the rich Erbtante nothing rausrückt, he sees only one way out: Suicide. But even while he proves to be a failure: All attempts to convey himself to death, miscarry. He hires a hitman to kill him. But then his situation improves suddenly, he wants to live and make the job undone. But that turns out to be not so easy.
Follows the life of several different people in 1960s in Germany for a few days. The story begins, when a juvenile criminal steals an old woman's handbag in a post office and throws it into a parking car, when he feels observed. But there was a lot of money in that bag, and thereby a dozen fortunes become entwined.
His grandpa gives the orphan boy Robbie a foal that they call "little brother". The boy loves the animal and wants to train it as a racing horse - but then his grandpa dies. Robbie's sister isn't old enough to care for themselves, so they get a guardian who decides to sell all the horses. Robbie hides his "little brother" at a farm, but it's hard for him to come up with the rent regularly..
When she was a little girl, Liuba came to town with her widowed mother to live in the block of flats owned by her aunt Anna Iwanowna. The wealthy and cold-hearted Anna Iwanowna barely accepted them as tenants. And no sooner did Liuba's mother die than she wanted to send her niece to the orphanage. Fortunately, Pawlin, Anna Iwanowna's janitor, decided to adopt her and he brought her up with affection. When she grew up, the beautiful Liuba fell in love with her aunt's son, Dodja, a good-looking but profligate army officer. Wishing nothing more than an affair with Liuba, Dodja did not hesitate to play the comedy of love to her. When she realized what Dodja was really after, Liuba was devastated and in desperation accepted to marry Pawlin, her benefactor, who had been infatuated with her for years. Alas, in the middle of the wedding party Dodja danced with Liuba and eloped with her
While vacationing in Puerto Rico, a young Swedish woman falls in love with and marries a powerful local landowner. Ten years later, their marriage has turned sour; meanwhile, two Swedish doctors have arrived on the island to investigate a mysterious fever.
