Hans Schnier, a scion of a wealthy and powerful family, leaves his parental home, disgusted by the falsehood and hypocrisy of his own and the "powerful" people surrounding them, and chooses the only profession that represents him: he becomes a clown, performing from city to city, accompanied by Marie, his first and only love. After six years of difficult cohabitation, Marie leaves him to marry an important figure in German Catholicism, and Hans, unable to get over her, steadily declines. Now a beggar, he ends up on the steps of the Bonn train station, waiting for Marie to return from her honeymoon.