While on an automobile tour of Italy with his mother, the German publisher in this story has an accident which results in her death. He decides to stay and look for work in Italy, rather than return to his responsibilities, and takes a job working on a construction site. His co-workers are similarly displaced men: one is a Greek exile, the other a Basque terrorist. The elaborate house they are working on is to be the home of a wealthy local man.

Robert, a masseur who is hard of hearing, is unaware that he has inherited millions. Four people want to take it from him: stockbroker Kuhl, his employee Späh and their friends Anna and Iris. Späh wants his girlfriend Iris to marry Robert in America in order to get half of the money. After a murder that Späh commits, but of which Robert seems suspicious, Robert actually flees to America, but not with Iris, but with Anna, who has since gotten wind of the affair. Robert and Anna marry in Las Vegas, and it is only back in Munich that Robert finds out about his inheritance. Robert leaves Anna, Späh shoots Kuhl and there is a showdown between Robert and Späh on a French island.

The three daughters of the Dessau merchant Sellmann move with their father to Prague in 1936, where he accepted a position as director of the Böhmische Landesbank. For the three different women begins a new life, which accompanies the film over a period of ten years.