Nestling Leopold has made friends with his homosexual classmate Balthasar Vierling, much to the displeasure of his conservative parents. His parents try to separate the two adolescents by sending Leopold to live with his brother Karl, who is stationed in Vilnius, Russia. Karl, still enthusiastic about the war, is supposed to turn the soft Leopold into a "whole man" - for which Karl even hires a prostitute. In the meantime, Balthasar, who has been left behind, gains the trust of Clemens Koch, a social democrat who has returned home wounded from the war and with whom Margarete Chindler, of all people, has fallen in love.