Maya Löffler

Josef Neumann has always been an outsider to society, and at the age of 30, he has already lived an adventurous life when he comes to the GDR. He was raised as a foundling by nuns, made an apprenticeship as a construction worker, went to the Foreign Legion, and was a seaman and a tramp. Now, he is working at the Warnow shipyard. Brigadier Bruno has a lot of sympathy and patience with the unconventional Josef, but Josef cannot fall in line with strict orders and again and again acts against the rules.

Private detective Fritsch from Munich had received a lucrative assignment: he was to obtain proof of inheritance for a Mr. Seligmann from Canada; this would bring the client a sum of five million dollars. He is therefore looking for an old document that was hidden in a valuable painting that disappeared decades ago. The starting point is a trail that leads to a town in Poland. The painting in question is said to have disappeared there in the final years of the Second World War. But the object of desire cannot be found here, and a new clue points to a grave in Frankenthal in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. Fretsch then found out that the painting must probably be in the villa of a personality with significant influence in the economy and politics of West Germany. Fretsch manages to get in touch with the wife of the presumed new owner of the painting and to find out the secret of his rise to multimillionaire status. But the people concerned use their resources to counterattack.