This story of the miller Florian, who gave all his money to the war against Napoleon, is loosely based on a true story. After the war, Florian's reimbursement is challenged, and he must also pay taxes on his destroyed mill. He resists the tax collectors and takes off to Vienna, where he intends to defend his rights. On the way, he rescues the Duchess of Guastalla from assault. She also wants to go to Vienna, as His Majesty Franz II is trying to contest an heir in her favor. With cunning, luck, and dagger, Florian fights his way through a slew of nobility and their secret police.

The two brothers Alfred and Hans are very different, one, a mummy's boy, still hopes for the great love at 35, the other enjoys life as a womanizer. When their mother dies, their lives change. Mama's boy Alfred and Don Juan Hans fall in love with the same woman. Their beloved is called Angelika who is in her mid-30s, works in a travel agency and considers herself emancipated. She has not married the father of her now 18-year-old daughter. All parties involved change as a result of the courtship of Angelika. The sad Alfred becomes a radiant lover, the womanizer starts thinking and Angelika herself feels younger and younger.

In May of 1983, a man turns 49 and, with his 17-year old son, journeys to the village in Baden that he left 40 years before. He wants to discover what happened then, the truth about an affair his mother had with a young Polish prisoner of war, how the authorities came to learn of it, the lovers' arrest, and the aftermath. While his son takes Polaroid photographs, he retraces the steps of his childhood and interviews those who should remember. The story is disclosed in flashbacks that focus on the lovers (Paulina and Stanislaus), on a jealous and conniving neighbor, and on Mayer, the local SS commander who wants to find a way out of inevitable consequences.