A West German man, mistaken by the police for a left wing terrorist, hides in Vienna with a prostitute and her incestuous teen daughter. They become both a threesome and a happy surrogate family, but nothing lasts forever.

The industrialist Greskämper, who is responsible for mass redundancies, is kidnapped by terrorists. The kidnappers demand a ransom of 1 million marks. The main characters in this crime comedy based on the novel by -ky are two representatives of the 1968 generation, now disillusioned and pursuing bourgeois dreams: Benno, an unemployed political scientist, and Britta, a graduate student in education from Berlin, run Benno's grandfather's tobacconist's store in the provinces. Then they find a badly injured woman in the woods who has been attacked by a sex offender. She is one of the terrorists who kidnapped Greskämper and has 750,000 marks of the ransom money with her. The woman dies, Benno and Britta bury her and distribute 500,000 marks to the workers Greskämper has dismissed. But then the police get onto their trail. Benno is arrested and Britta makes off with the remaining money.