유명 독일인 지휘자 에두아드는 이스라엘인과 팔레스타인인으로 구성된 오케스트라를 꾸려 보자는 제안에 직접 오디션을 진행한다. 그의 가르침을 받고 싶어하는 이/팔 젊은 음악가들은 열정적으로 오디션에 참여하고 각국 인원 반반으로 구성된 오케스트라가 만들어진다. 연습하는 하루하루가 긴장의 연속이지만 에두아르는 음악으로 모든 구성원이 하나가 되도록 노력하고, 단원들도 점점 변화하며 서로를 존중하기 시작한다.
The focus is on a family - or what one might think of it today: a wide variety of characters and interests collide when people grow together into a family, in a time when everyone just wants to become something, but nobody knows how to be someone anymore.
Two worlds collide when the thoroughbred Swabian Roland Reuter is transferred to Duisburg by his employer, the bakery Weckle. There he is supposed to bring the downsized company branch back into the black. For the solid employee an immense challenge - not least because his wife Sybille and pubescent daughter at home in the country has remained. Thus, Roland works hard from Monday to Friday to implement Swabian work ethic for his staff, who are endowed with typical Ruhr-pot-serenity.
This is a family story that covers thirty years in the life of the Freytag family (narrated by the grandson, Robert). When his grandfather returns from Russia in 1949, he becomes part of the German "economic miracle" by producing garden gnomes. Klaus, Robert's father, wants to become a writer. He marries Gisela who almost immediately gets pregnant with Robert - but the marriage doesn't work. Both parents abandon the child, and Robert goes on living with both pairs of grand parents. While his father belongs to the 1968 generation that rebels against their fathers he falls in love with the neighbor's's daughter Laura.
