Hannah and Sam are young, have a house, a lovely daughter, Anja, and well paid work. However, their comfortable family routine is thrown into emotional turmoil. When Hannah realizes Sam has an affair with a young female colleague, she packs her suitcase and returns to her mother. She reunites with her ex-flame Leo, from her student years hoping it will help her to move on, but discovers that Leo is a philanderer. Hannah makes a hard choice.

In the early 60s, Bernward Vesper and fellow university student Gudrun Ensslin begin a passionate love in the stifling atmosphere of provincial West Germany. Dedicated to the power of the written word, Bernward and Gudrun found a publishing house whose first publication is, paradoxically to many, a controversial past work of Bernward’s ostracized father, an infamous Nazi author. Bernward defends his father’s writing ability, even if he is haunted by his father’s suspicious past.