Leftist experimental poet Walter Kranz (Kurt Raab) has hit a wall creatively and his publisher won't advance him any more money until he produces additional work. Kranz distracts himself with prostitutes, infidelity and violence until, in the wake of a revelatory dream, he concludes that he's the reincarnation of romantic poet Stefan George. He begins to pass off George's poems as his own, and adopts what he believes the dead writer's habits and style to have been.

Film lecture by Rainer Sarnet before the film.