Drama series focusing on the Bavarian Grandauer family and the historic events between 1897 and 1954. At the end of the 19th century, police officer Ludwig Grandauer marries the mother of his illegitimate son, Agnes. After some years, they move to Munich with their three children Karl, Luise, and Adolf, where Ludwig works at the police headquarters called "Löwengrube". During the next decade, the children have to learn to care for themselves because Agnes and Ludwig both die. When Karl returns from World War I, everything has changed. Luise is married to Max Kreitmeier who owns a bakery, while Adolf joins a new nationalist party called NSDAP. Karl himself is more moderate and works for the police like his father. In the 1920s, he gets to know Traudl Soleder, daughter of a bourgeois family whose brother Kurt fights against the up and coming Nazi movement. After their wedding, Traudl's bugging mother also moves in. When Hitler comes into power in 1933, Karl remains a police officer, but doesn't join the party, while Adolf makes a career in the law. Meanwhile, Kurt's situation worsens because he is married to Sara, a Jewess from Berlin. During World II, the Grandauers' sons Rudi and Max become soldiers and their parents lose their flat during an air raid. They barely survive, while Adolf loses his wife and children except one son. In the post-war era, Kurt and Sara, as victims of the Nazi system, have many benefits, but also have to live with the same people who harassed them before. They drift apart more and more, but after Kurt is nearly killed in a car accident, they move to Berlin together. Karl and Traudl mourn for their allegedly killed son Rudi who suddenly returns and wants to catch up on his youth. Meanwhile, his brother marries the daughter of a former Nazi. The story ends on New Year's Eve 1954: the whole family is reunited, but something seems to be wrong with Traudl's old mother.
—fippi2000