Jena, 1819. The young philosophy student Jakob Feister and his friend Carl Ludwig Sand are underdogs in the small university town. They are both pupils of the spell binder Charles Follen, also known as Follenius, and members of his secret club “Die Unbedingten” which is under surveillance by the secret police.

Jakob and Carl have been convinced for a long time that something must happen, a warning signal, to shake up Germany, and that they should be the ones to do it. But then Jakob falls in love and becomes hesitant about their plans. Since Jakob’s parents are very much against his wedding plans, he swears in his frustration to go through with the original plans with his friend Carl: the assassination of the, in their opinion, unpatriotic poet August von Kotzebue.