In Vienna in 1913, Ulrich, a 32-year-old mathematician who has never settled on what he is, takes a year's holiday from his own life and becomes secretary of the Parallel Campaign, a committee planning a grand jubilee for Emperor Franz Joseph in 1918. Around its meetings gather a salon hostess, a Prussian magnate, a general and the case of a sex murderer, while Ulrich drifts towards his sister Agathe.