Story of a farmer's wife waiting for her husband to return home from the war.

Leopold Bachmayer, a court judge in Vienna, is a grumpy bachelor. Doing foolish things for the sake of a woman could never happen to him. He is firmly convinced of this. This changes abruptly when, shortly before his vacation, he has to interrogate the seductive Frau von Seewald about a brooch allegedly stolen by a maid.

The deceased owner of a medieval castle stipulated the following in his will: The heir to his mighty estate would be the elder of the two stepsisters, Katharina and Margrit von Kronberg, namely Margrit, if she married Heinz Wagner, a cousin who had just returned from captivity. When Margrit observed Katharina and Heinz rendezvousing at a nearby lake, Margrit demanded that her husband leave the castle immediately, before she, the elder sister, and Heinz were married. Furious, Katharina then plotted to poison Margrit. Only when Katharina dreamed that the village youth would avenge Margrit's violent death according to ancient tradition and that she, Katharina, would be burned on a pyre like witches in the Middle Ages, did she, after awakening from this nightmare, abandon her bloody plan. Her change of will is rewarded: Heinz has decided to marry Katharina and not Margrit.

Kathrin von Hagen runs an extremely successful guesthouse in the stylish Löwenberg Castle. Kathrin also has a passion that she pursues with dedication: writing. She would love to see her latest crime play on stage, but the publisher Thomas Brand, who is currently a guest in her hotel, doesn't think much of the work. Some of Kathrin's friends decide to help her by performing a key scene in the play on site and thereby prove to Brand that the play has dramatic potential. No sooner said than done: the castle's library is chosen as the performance venue and quietly decorated to create an atmospheric atmosphere...

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.