Friedrich Torberg

Kurt Gerber is attending his final class and gets into trouble with the math professor, a frustrated self-assured petty bourgeois sadist. The duel ends in catastrophe.

Former concert pianist, victim of Nazi torture, pursues a confused, melancholic existence on the island of Guadalupe.

The film presents the political events surrounding the Anschluss in March of 1938 through the lives of Carola Hell, a popular young actress at the prestigious Theater in der Josefstadt, and Martin Hofmann, the Jewish journalist she plans to marry. When we encounter the couple in the lovely springtime weather their future is full of promise. They are determined to stay clear of politics. Yet in the climate of the time, nobody of her prominence or his religion can remain apolitical. Although Martin's journalist friend, Drechsler, calls to inform them that the Nazis plan to take over Austria soon, they concentrate on their work and their private happiness and dismiss the warnings.

Unemployed and homeless actors following the dream of finding the future in South America. The manager Osvaldo Curtis tricks the group of colorful and failed artists to apply for a special visa overseas.

The young pastor Peter Hell, kind and philanthropic, is the subject of gossip spread by the hateful Wurzelsepp, who was once refused marriage.