A schoolboy Tonio Kroger is in love with his classmate Hans. They walk together, Tonio escorts him home. Kroger suggests that Hans should read the "Don Carlos" by Schiller, but the last is more interested in drawings of horses. Tonio feels lonely and misunderstood.
Tonio is in love also with the girl Inge (Ingeborg Holm). For her he goes to the dance teacher. But Inge does not pay attention on him and he suffers and mistakes in the quadrille. Another girl loves Tonio, but he is already beginning to understand that happiness is not to be loved, but to catch fleeting moments of intimacy with your lover.
The Kroger family is ruined, the firm is on sale, the mother marries a second time. After growing up Tonio leaves for another city. As a writer he understands that without love the heart is dead, and seeks for carnal pleasures, is debauched for which he constantly reproaches himself. The moral suffering of Tonio strengthens his talent. It does not work for the sake of food, just life without work does not exist for it. Kroger believes that good works arise only in the struggle against difficulties, and one must die in order to create great art.
Tonio lives in Munich and often communicates with friends: an artist, his peer, and novelist. Friends have long arguments about art and their role in it.
Tonio moves to Denmark, visiting his hometown along the road near the Danish border. Staying in the best hotel Tonio goes to Hans' house, remembering their walks. In the home of Kroger is now a people's library. On the way to Denmark the writer is stopped by the police and they require documents, but Tonio has none. He gives them proofreading of the novel, signed by his name, and Kroger is released.
Having arrived in the Danish city of Helsingor Tonio stops in a small coastal hotel where a group of tourists arrives soon. In this group Tonio sees Hans and Inge, but they do not notice him. At the evening ball Kroger watches them and understands: he still loves them, never forgot them and worked for them. Suddenly he realizes that he would like to turn back time, to write nothing, be cheerful, respectable and beloved, have a wife and children. In a letter to the artist Tonio admits that she was right when she called him a burgher. He stands between two worlds. Artists see him as a philistine, and ordinary people want to arrest him. He promises her to do better. Tonio gives his love to "blond and blue-eyed, alive, happy, giving joy, ordinary." This love is fertile and fruitful.
