In the village of Öd, a village with a population of just over a thousand, a stork is placed in the garden of Adam Möschl, a former host of the Schlagerparade (pop music parade), and his wife Dietlinde. However, she is not expecting a child. The stork may mean that Adam is having an affair, and that she is expecting a child. Soon after, he is found dead. After it appears to be an accident, station commander Magnus Tröger believes there is no murder case. Dietlinde, on the other hand, is convinced that her husband was driven to his death by the postwoman Liesl. Liesl doesn't believe it was an accident either; she has to prove that she had nothing to do with Adam's death.

In the spring of 1902, Viennese working-class daughter Marie König runs away from her beating father and is lured into a high-class brothel by an agent. Instead of the promised self-determined life "with horse-drawn carriage rides and silk dresses", she experiences closed doors, violence and exploitation. Only after years of agony does Marie confide in the journalist Emil Bader, who makes the conditions in the brothel public and takes the owner, Regine Riehl, to court.