Viennese vegetable merchant Karl Kassbach becomes a member of a right-wing extremist organization, which plans numerous attacks on democratic institutions and journalists. The film attempts to portray a realistic and detail-oriented study of the mind of the "Kleinbürger", trapped between the fringes of the lower and middle-classes.
The intellectual Willie flees from his bourgeois-academic environment, leaving behind his wife, child, and job to lead a vagabond life. In Vienna, he meets the retired laborer Josef, who becomes his closest friend. Together, they drink and roam the city. Willie makes one last attempt to visit his ex-wife in Salzburg, but she turns him away. Secretly, he takes his son Tommi with him, putting him in danger when they encounter a sinister motorcycle gang.
A copywriter gets famous with his first book. When asked to write a new novel about love for his publisher, he urgently needs tutoring since he doesn't know the first thing about it. His way through the beds leads him to the very young Orli. In her he discovers the true meaning of love, which makes him forget all the wrong paths of the past decades and feel young again.
