The film tells the story of twin German sisters Lotte (Thekla Reuten) and Anna (Nadja Uhl), who are separated when they are six. After the deaths of their parents, they are "divided" between quarreling distant relatives, one being raised in the Netherlands and the other in Germany. Lotte grows up in a loving middle-class intellectual family in Amsterdam, and Anna is raised in virtual servitude by a poor Catholic peasant family in a backward area.