The film presents three faces of Berlin as a visual puzzle: the old imperial and fascist Berlin; the newly reconstructed Berlin around Breitscheidplatz; and finally, Berlin as evoked by the elderly Adelheid Pickert, an opera singer of almost 90 who was famous as a Mahler interpreter around 1910. This third Berlin is that of a future European center freed from the weight of the past. Pickert's portrait — whose statements are described as "strangely brilliant" — creates a counterpoint to the atmosphere of Berlin in the summer of 1970.