The return of Robert's grandfather Erich from captivity not only triggers joy among his family in the Franconian province of the 50s. Nobody expected his arrival anymore. Soon, however, he became part of the German economic miracle with his garden gnome factory. Son Klaus, on the other hand, who was rather moderately talented in literature, dreamed of a career as a writer during the social upheaval of the 60s. He falls in love with the highly talented Gisela, who comes from a wealthy family, who in turn becomes an important writer. Their child Robert doesn't really want to fit into the plans and dreams of the '68 bohemians in West Berlin, and so the parents send little Robert on a long odyssey through his own family and to the most diverse places in the republic. It is only over when Robert, as a young adult, finds his great childhood love again. Oskar Roehler's melancholic and ironic family epic was created parallel to his autobiographical novel Herkunft (Origin) and takes the viewer into the world of the old Federal Republic of Germany and West Berlin, between garden gnome, cheese hedgehog and trip to Italy. SOURCES OF LIFE tells the story of Robert Freytag and his family over three generations in a moving, rousing and humorous way - and thus at the same time the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, from the brown to the black and the red to the flower power times.