Budapest in the thirties. The restaurant owner Laszlo hires the pianist András to play in his restaurant. Both men fall in love with the beautiful waitress Ilona who inspires András to his only composition. His song of Gloomy Sunday is, at first, loved and then feared, for its melancholic melody triggers off a chain of suicides. The fragile balance of the erotic ménage à trois is sent off kilter when the German Hans goes and falls in love with Ilona as well.
Vienna in the eighties. An accidental meeting in a restaurant. She, Hannah, is Jewish and has a live-in lover, a young and successful architect. He, Friedrich, is a German and lives permanently in Vienna.
Two worlds collide with another, begin to become entangled in each other. Friedrich too, has his problems. He is a "German", which fascinates and repels Hannah at the same time. She tries to get over her confusion by being ironic and flirtatious. Simultaneously, what she has tried to suppress breaks through in flashbacks...
World War II is over and Heinrich, a young German boy, influenced by the Russians, starts to act according to Communist principles in a small German village.
A train travels through the vastness of Russia, a train with German prisoners of war returning home, and Viktor Kleist, a young German communist from an intellectual home in Munich, travels back home with them. During the journey, the stations on his way to Lenin wake up again.
London in 1856. Karl Marx is living in exile in the British capital. One day, "Mohr", as Marx is called by his friends, meets the 13-year old worker′s son Joe. The boy works every day for twelve hours in a spinning mill and even has to work night shifts although that violates current rules. Marx tries to end the illegal activities of the spinning mill owner and one night shows up at the mill together with an inspector. But his foray is undermined by a robbery by the rebellious raven gang that is led by Joe′s brother Billy. The spinning mill owner of course takes this chance to blame his young workers for the theft. But Marx is not let astray and does not stop to fight against child labour. Furthermore, he tries to get the members of the raven gang back on the straight and narrow – with success.
