The film centres around the young woman Erika, desperately seeking for love and escape from the depression of the times, drifting, and in the end becoming involved with a circle of rich people who sell goods for sexual favours.

After World War II, a lot of people, who lived in the eastern parts of the Third Reich had to be relocated. One of them is Hugo Starosta (Martin Held) with his family. They live in a fortress. Hugo is unemployed, his children don't seem to like school, but somehow they managa to get through.

1953 film by Arthur Pohl

1961 film by Wolfgang Schleif

After the death of his Russian mother, nine-year-old orphan Peter lives with Professor Hartmann and his daughter Helga, who cares for him like a mother. Peter is very musical. He especially loves the melancholy songs of the Don Cossack Choir, which remind him of his mother. Because the boy has suffered from a severe heart defect since birth, his doctor, Dr. Stark, has forbidden him any excitement, including music. When one day the Don Cossack Choir's tour bus breaks down near Peter's house with engine trouble, the little boy meets the conductor Serge Jaroff and his famous singers in person.

Lothar von Pütz and Roswitha von Krakow fall in love and only then discover that their fathers are bitter enemies. When Lothar's father dies, a close friend of his father's, Baron Maximilian von Hanckel, takes the boy under his wing and tries to make peace between the families. He visits Roswitha's father, who begins to hope that he can marry his daughter to the older, but wealthy, baron, who is still a bachelor. When an argument breaks out between Lothar and Roswitha, she agrees to marry Maximilian. It is only at the pre-wedding party that Roswitha and Lothar have a real conversation. Maximilian overhears everything, releases Roswitha from her vows, and brings the two young people together.