1929: Marie Lehning, a farm worker from Warmsdorf on the Baltic Sea, falls in love with the fisherman's son Mingo. Both complete an apprenticeship in Lübeck. Marie wants to become a seamstress, Mingo a carpenter. After their first night of love, they swear eternal fidelity. But Marie has to return to the village, her mother is ill and her siblings are unprovided for. She starts working as a maid on a farm. Unexpectedly, she meets the young Kurt Meier from Berlin, whom she knows from before.

Micha does the same. He falls in love with Claudia, whom he hardly knew until then, and he falls in love with the role of being a father. Friends and acquaintances bring their children to him and Micha becomes a babysitter, initially against his will. Everything could go on like this, if it weren't for one thing that Micha doesn't know: Claudia's child is not his. Claudia herself has made a compromise in her ideas about life and love that she is now unable to cope with.