Munich in the early 1920s. The progressive art historian and museum director Dr. Martin Krüger is involved in a lawsuit by the reactionary forces of the state of Bavaria because of his idiosyncratic, independent purchasing and exhibition policy, which allegedly violates the 'healthy public feeling'. Forced by high political authorities, especially by Minister of Justice Otto Klenk, a skilled opportunistic power politician, a manipulated court sentences the uncomfortable man Krüger to three years in prison with the help of a perjured witness. Supported by the liberal, rational Swiss writer Jacques Tüverlin, the Jewish lawyer Dr. Siegbert Geyer and the social-revolutionary engineer Kaspar Prockl, Johanna Krain fights for the release and rehabilitation of the unjustly convicted against the background of the rising Hitler fascism. (Lyrics: BR)