Wolfgang Stein spends years in Bautzen prison for attempting to flee the republic. He was ransomed by the West German government in 1971 and ended up in a reception camp in Unna. There he falls in love with a nurse, Anne, with whom he soon moves in together, who becomes pregnant by him and whom he soon marries. One day, an old friend, Dieter Michaelis, a fellow prisoner from Bautzen, comes to the reception center and asks Stein to work as an escape helper for his brother-in-law living in the GDR.