Sonja Schadt is born in Berlin in 1904, just as her future guardian Lorenz Adlon has received permission to build a luxury hotel at the Brandenburg Gate.

Louis Adlon's new wife Hedda has uncanny business sense, organizing spectacular balls and other lucrative events in the Roaring Twenties; it is in the lobby of the hotel that Sonja meets Julian, a Jewish musician, and falls in love.

It is now the late 1930s, and Julian must flee with his and Sonja's daughter; a new period of sorrow and suffering begins as Sonja guides the Adlon through the war, while burning to know what has happened to Julian and her daughter.