On the eve of World war I, a 14-year-old German girl returns to her home on the Baltic coast, a place uneasily shared by Germans, Russiand and Estonians. While her morbid scientist father controls the family with cruel hand, the passionate young girl secretly nurses a wounded Estonian anarchist back to health - at first an act of curiosity and then of defiance that could set off an uncontrollable chain re-action...