Life and Death of the German poet Heinrich von Kleist, not told chronologically but in a many faceted and fragmentary form.
We see the young officer cadet "Heinrich" at his commissioning, we see the music making young man, already bewildered by the Prussian military service, we see the enthusiastic man, full of animosity against the French, we take part at the difficulties of a continual petitioner (for money, for a job, for an audiance with the poet-prince Goethe), we find him as a homo-sexual in the forest, lovingly together with Ernst von Pfuel, the so-called "little curly head...", and, on the other hand, he is incestiously fond of his half-sister Ulrike in love with his "Pentesilea", a girl who prefers men's trousers to skirts. Finally the suicide of the 34 years old poet along with his understanding girlfriend, Henriette Vogel, his "angel of death".