Grumpy, wealthy funeral undertaker Siegfried Schroff, a recluse divorcee who loves only his dachshund Paula, counts on his brother, the Lutheran pastor and Bavarian town councilor, to assign an idyllic municipal meadow with romantic view for his dream, a private cemetery. To their surprise, a competing bid must legally be considered, from midwife Irene Lieblich, who dreams of investing a recent inheritance into founding a rustic maternity, and moved into the house next door Siegfried with her brat daughter Katja (9), upsetting his meticulously quiet life infuriatingly already. Still the brat manages to bring them closer together, having bonded with Paula, into a dynamical, contradictory hate-love relationship, with Siegfried caught in the middle but destined as pacifier.