Georg Dietrich is a professor of physics whose life's work is an invention that should enable humans to stop time. But unexpectedly, he is forbidden from continuing his research work.
As if this were not setback enough, shortly afterward it turns out that his beloved wife Helene is terminally ill. The doctor gives her only a a year to live. Out of sheer desperation, the scientist secretly resumes his research with the aim of producing the time capsule in time to prevent his wife's imminent death.
The couple soon moves into a secluded house in the middle of a forest on the mountains, in order to be able to live there in "isolated" from the rest of civilization. Death has no access in George's self-created universe. Helene is unaware of the truth.
But the idyllic happiness of the two soon falls apart when Georg's secret is threatened to be exposed by an eager young woman, who wants to continue his research work not knowing that the time capsule she seeks of already exists.