The von Trapp family are struggling to survive in America, where their performances of European church music are not popular with the audiences. Only when they start performing more upbeat Austrian folk songs and even some American numbers do they become a success and finally find security and a new home.

1958: during the Russian campaign, a military priest is called upon to assist Private Baranowski, who has been sentenced to death for desertion, on his last night. It is also the last night before the departure for Stalingrad, which the soldiers know means certain death. The priest leaves his room to a captain so that he can meet his fiancée one last time. He himself remains in Baranowski's cell and struggles with his conscience and his emotion - even more so when he learns that the young doomed man committed desertion out of love. But the execution is carried out, and a member of the firing squad finds only cynical words for the soldier's fate.

Four-generation story-saga dealing with the decline of a middle-class Lübeck family. The first adaptation of a Thomas Mann book was also Gerhard Lamprecht’s first major film.

The film portrays the interaction of Johann Friedrich Struensee, a doctor treating the mentally ill Christian VII of Denmark, and his English consort Caroline Matilda.