The story of the paradoxical relationship of two parents.
As he clears out his parents' house, Philipp, a photographer, comes
across an object that has played a major role in his parents' lives.
Herta and Georg made a fine couple when they first met. Their son
imagines the early days of their relationship and remembers how his
father was forced to flee across the inner-German border to the West.
When Herta and Philipp joined him a few days later, this could have
signaled the start of a new era of happiness, but the seeds of their
separation had already been sown. In gentle, probing prose, Gert
Loschütz describes how Philipp gradually unravels the paradoxical nature
of his parents' relationship: it was love that destroyed their love. To
his astonishment, Philipp discovers that Herta and Georg had been in
contact all those years in a way they kept secret even from one another.