After the death of genius Richard Wagner his wife Cosima fights for his legacy even against the will of her children Sigmund and Sieglinde.
Henriette is terminally ill with cancer. Since her diagnosis, contact with her sister Gerlinde has fizzled out. It is only when she talks to the open-minded pastor Linus Gobert that she begins to accept her fate and gets closer to her sister again. But before she can tell Gerlinde about her illness, she is shot dead in the street. Gerlinde, the only witness to the crime, doubts that it was a robbery.
