Overview

The ailing writer and psychoanalyst Lou Andreas-Salomé is leading a lonely existence in Göttingen 1933 threatened by the Nazi regime. When German philologist Ernst Pfeiffer enters her life, she begins to write her memoirs with him. Born 1861 in St. Petersburg she vows never to fall in love and to pursue intellectual perfection. She meets Paul Rée and Friedrich Nietzsche and against all conventions of time, Lou and Rée live and study together in Berlin. Lou attains her goal of an intellectual and free spirited life, but when she meets the young and still unknown writer Rainer Maria Rilke she falls in love.