Hans Fallada tells in his published after the war novel "The drinker" the story of the agricultural wholesaler Erwin Sommer who flees from his narrow bourgeois relations under the burdens of the new times in the kingdom of the king alcohol whose liberty and independence promises prove a lie - the only truth of the alcohol. On behalf of the WDR television play Ulrich Plenzdorf has adapted Fallada's 1944/45 novel for a film adaptation by Tom Toelle with Harald Juhnke in the main role of Erwin Sommer.