The title refers to the Feuerzangenbowle punch consumed by a group of gentlemen in the opening scene. While they exchange nostalgic stories about their schooldays, the successful young writer Dr. Johannes Pfeiffer realizes he missed out on something because he was taught at home and never attended school. He decides to make up for it by masquerading as a student at a small-town high school. At the school, he quickly gains a reputation as a prankster. Together with his classmates, he torments his professors Crey, Bömmel, and Headmaster Knauer with adolescent mischief. His girlfriend Marion unsuccessfully tries to persuade him to give up his foolish charade. Eventually, he falls in love with the headmaster's daughter and discloses his identity after provoking the teachers into expelling him from school.
Bruno Stiegler, a boxing promoter with a disreputable past, returns from America to Berlin to make some big things again with his friends. Fatally, he is always preceded by some gentlemen from better circles who are developing amazing criminal activity in their old days. They are led by Oberlandesgerichtsrat a. D. Herbert Zänker, whom it still hisses, that he could bring in his term Bruno never behind bars.
The third form of a boarding school and the students of a neighboring school do not get along. Each side dreams up the craziest pranks to defeat the other. And when one day the high school students go as far as stealing the Gymnasium students’ essays and even burning them, daily school life really gets out of hand.
In South Tirol, shortly after ww-ii: Paul and Barbara Holzmann and their son Charlie own a small gasoline station. At their wedding anniversary, of all days, Barbara finds proof that Paul may again have cheated on her. At first she believes his explanations, but when she finds more proof later, she leaves and seeks comfort in the arms of her former friend Nicola in Italy. The story is told from the perspective of her diary.
