After her husband's death, Kate Zeller had to sell the farm and move with her four children from the countryside to Vienna. There she opened a small laundry and raised her children. When they grew up, they thought they no longer needed their mother. But it turns out that they still need her...

The conversion of a pedantic family tyrant into an understanding husband and father.

Shortly before the end of the war: Disillusioned Austrian soldiers crammed into a barracks in a prison camp welcome a new arrival who has nothing better to do than rave to the men, who have been separated from their homeland for years, about his Viennese lover. When the womanizer mentions the name of his latest love affair, Manhardt, her husband, jumps at him in outrage; the adulterer falls and dies. Acquitted of murder and returned to Vienna, Manhardt cannot get over his Anni's infidelity. Friends and a second fateful coincidence help.

Franz Xaver Silvester Pomeisl travels thru the decades looking for the good old times.