Even the military academy can't stop kind-hearted officer Gottfried Engelhardt from seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. Everything in the young GDR is blooming: Engelhardt's career, the socialist state, the black market, and maybe even a chance at love.
East Berlin, late 1970s: Because she doesn't really have any particular career aspirations, Marta becomes a nurse. And since true love is a long time coming, the 17-year-old seduces Monty, the young man next door. Then there are her parents' marital problems. Marta is in the middle of the exciting trials of growing up.
Three couples want to spend a short break together. Some have a traffic accident, the others are prevented professionally. So the designer Robert and the youth helper Ellen are forced to spend the days in a remote farmhouse alone with her young son. The previously suppressed marriage crisis breaks open. Allegations, confessions, charges, self-accusations are in the room. Painfully, they come to the realization that only their own happiness is responsible for their happiness. With the old landlord, each of them finds himself. In the end, Robert and Ellen want to try a new beginning.
Young lieutenant Riedel, the leader of a motorized unit of NVA riflemen, is always concerned about his men. Thus, he is all the more happy that everything is running smoothly with the new recruits when he returns from his honeymoon. It seems to him that lance corporal Weißenbach, who is not only the oldest of the men but also a formidable armoured personnel carrier driver, has been a reliable stand-in for him. Thus, Riedel is all the more surprised when he learns that Weißenbach boosts the squad's performance with partly questionable methods.
October 1918: Karl Liebknecht is released from prison and Berlin workers celebrate his release. Although WWI is almost over, the German Kaiserreich in vain sends its last reserves to the slaughter. The working class is in a rebellious mood; the uprising of Kiel’s sailors against war and militarism sets off a call for revolution led by Liebknecht. On November 9, Liebknecht declares the Free Socialist Republic of Germany. But pro-Kaiser military and right wing Social Democrats oppose him.