A screenwriter comes up with a story about an affair between a maid and her employer.

In a mountain village a deranged alcoholic who routinely beats his wife and kids goes missing. Though everyone in the village is glad to see him gone, an investigation begins.

The young Schiller, whose heart and soul are writing and poetry, is forced into the military academy (the pride and joy of the Duke of Württemberg). Schiller is disgusted by the everyday routine of the military, always back and forth between breeding and drills. Conversation, conflict or even critique are discouraged – the oppression insufferable for the young rebel. Disgusted by the brutality, he writes his drama "The Bandit", which he would later publish anonymously. But following a frank conversation with the Duke, Schiller is dishonored and must leave the land.

Country Dr. Robert Koch is desperate: a tuberculosis epidemic is decimating the children in his district and no one is able to do anything about it. Every fourth child is already sick and the parents must helplessly watch as their young ones die. Now Koch is undertaking to find the cause of the tuberculosis --- something he has already been working on for years --- which has been causing this plague of illness. His work is made more difficult by envy; for example, that of his teacher, who was wounded defending his honor. But his greatest obstacle is the famous Berliner scientist and Reichstag deputy, Privy Councilor Rudolf Virchow: He is extraordinarily skeptical of Koch's theory, that the cause for tuberculosis is a bacteria.