Music is the life of the „singing Bertrams“. Papa Bernhard’s (Gerhart Lippert) family of six lives happily in Wachau (Austria). Only the fatal accident of the mother in a journalist’s car puts the idyll to the test. The family becomes increasingly alienated until their eldest daughter Maria (Simone Heher) draws a line. She separates from her boyfriend and goes to Berlin as a nurse. Soon the rest of the pack follows into the noisy metropolis. Dad finds a job as a music teacher, but the new environment creates unpleasant tensions.