Based on Joseph Roth's novella.

The boy Simplizissimus grows up with simple farmers in the Spessart region. But the idyll is abruptly destroyed by the Thirty Years' War. Simplizissimus is sent to the besieged fortress of Hanau. When the lansquenets there play crude jokes on him, he flees with his friend Herzbruder to the Croats. But even here he does not fare much better.

Every day they clean the dirty windows of their cars from the filthy film that has formed overnight. Measuring stations call a low smog warning. But one day a soccer player collapses on the pitch with breathlessness.