Walter Klam

During the closing stages of the Second World War, a bureaucratic mistake leads to a German officer being reassigned from the dangerous Eastern Front to Berlin and a new non-existent unit.

Julia Martens is a wrongly convicted murderess who is released from prison after thirteen years. She begins a new career as a chanson singer and her now grown-up son, who has been told that his mother is dead, has no idea who Julia Martens really is. One day he is suspected of murder and Julia intervenes.

Alexander Schonath is an exceptionally gifted musician who plays first violin in a philharmonic orchestra. But when the orchestra runs into financial difficulties, Alexander is the first to leave and join a dance band – the other musicians, especially his father, see him as a "deserter." In Alexander's absence, his younger, perpetually sickly brother Hans makes a career in the philharmonic and becomes engaged to Maria, the daughter of the orchestra's chairman, Herbert Hartwig.