The last decade (1937-47) of poet Hans Fallada's life. He lives with his family in Carwitz. His craving for harmony collides with the circumstances of the times and his own inner turmoil. He writes already anything of note, drinks, and takes pills. His wife Anna sees him through his times of darkest depression, tolerating his overt aggression and his affair with housemaid Anneliese. But once he begins a relationships with the manufacturer's widow Ursula Losch, Anna finally demands a divorce. His love for pretty, young Ursula gives him a new thirst for life, but only briefly. She is a morphine addict and pulls him further down into the abyss. The high times are followed by increasingly deeper low times. After the war ends, the Red Army sets him up as a mayor, but he fails to function in such an unfamiliar position and numbs himself with more alcohol and morphine. He goes to Berlin, and at friends' insistence he writes in a short time the poem "Everyone Dies Alone." Yet physically, his body has been pushed beyond its limits and he winds up in a hospital, where he dies in February 1947.