Josef Nötzli is a shy and somewhat awkward man. He has been working as an accountant in a chemical plant in West Berlin for 26 years. But Nötzli originally comes from Switzerland. Nötzli started out as an accountant and remained in this position. Due to a misunderstanding, Nötzli suddenly makes someone else's career. At last, Nötzli is able to put his knowledge and concepts into practice. With his ideas, he quickly steers the badly damaged company back into the profit zone. But it is precisely at this moment that Nötzli's high-flying career comes to an abrupt end: the mysterious misunderstanding comes to light and Nötzli is dismissed from his post, accused of deliberately obtaining a position by fraud. Together with his colleague Neubauer, Nötzli ends up back in the accounts department. Now nothing can keep him in the company. He leaves the chemical plant with his friend Neubauer. But is this farewell final?

A poor orphan boy runs away from the children's home and sets up his lonely fatherly friend with his youth welfare officer. As a result, nothing stands in the way of our hero's adoption.

In the second part of the drama, the wounded Jürgen hears about the happy years his father Michael spent with his wife Bim at the "Fohlenhof." He learns how the war took everything from him and how Michael was nearly broken by the death of his beloved Bim, who died while giving birth to Jürgen. It was only through his favorite horse that he began to believe in life again and fight for his son.

After World War II, Jürgen Godeysen ends up in a hospital, wounded and traumatized. There, the young Nicoline reads to him from the diaries of his father, Michael. The entries chronicle his life and loves, from the moment he first encountered his first love as a young ensign in Berlin at the turn of the century, to the moment he returned from World War I broken and with no will to live.