Using the example of three generations of a Hamburg working class family, the rise of the working class from the founding of the Wilhelmin Empire to the First World War, over the time of the Weimar Republic and National Socialism to the destruction of the Third Reich.

Winter of 1943. Cheerful, shy beginning of a tender love between the electric fitter Paul, who works on the estate on the power poles and the girl Anna. Both encounter each other during the war on a Mecklenburg estate. The three buxom and arrogant maids Elsa I, II and III, who also work in the manor, provide wit and pleasure.