Okraina plot
1914, a small provincial village in tsarist Russia during the First World War. Mueller is a German prisoner of war who has been given permission to work in the shoemaker's shop in the village. He develops a relationship with the young Russian woman Anka, who is hopelessly in love with him, even though she can hardly communicate with him. This relationship was made possible by Robert Karl, a German friend of Anka's father. Karl has told and taught her enough about his country to make her dispel xenophobia for all things German, and thus hostile.