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.

Florestan Mississippi, a public prosecutor by profession, visits a lady named Anastasia and, while drinking coffee with her, convicts her of poisoning her husband. At the same time, he asks for her hand in marriage, as he too has killed his wife with poison; the marriage is to be the "atonement" of the two poisoners. The four allegorical personifications in this comedy are, in addition to the loveless, absolute justice in the form of the prosecutor Mississippi, perfect equality, represented by the world revolutionary Saint-Claude, Christian love, embodied in the down-and-out, alcoholic tropical doctor Count Uebelohe-Zabernsee, and finally the "Frau Welt" of the old mystery play – Anastasia, who falls for everyone and betrays everyone, loves nothing but the moment, and dies with an invoked untruth on her lips.

Bruno Stiegler, a boxing promoter with a disreputable past, returns from America to Berlin to make some big things again with his friends. Fatally, he is always preceded by some gentlemen from better circles who are developing amazing criminal activity in their old days. They are led by Oberlandesgerichtsrat a. D. Herbert Zänker, whom it still hisses, that he could bring in his term Bruno never behind bars.