The film follows the life of Maria Braun beginning with her marriage to her husband, Hermann in West Germany in the final days of WWII. After a day and a half of marriage, he has to leave her and she is left to support herself and her mother. As the war comes to a close and occupation soldiers move into the neighborhood, Maria finds herself a job at a local bar, which caters to the Americans. After being informed that Hermann was killed in battle, Maria catches the eye of and falls for a black American soldier. The two begin a love affair and he teaches her English in this time. Months later, however, Hermann returns home to find the two of them in bed. He barely fights against Bill, the American, who is, himself, a reserved man. When the two do become locked in struggle however, Maria hits Bill over the head with a bottle, accidentally killing him. When she is brought up on charges, Hermann takes the blame and goes to prison for her. She tells him that while he is there, she will wait for him, and build a life for them.
And she does. On her way home one day, she meets and charms a French businessman whom she persuades to give her a job. In the company of him and his business partner, she takes big risks and the company quickly grows. She builds herself a decent living and buys a house. During this time, she begins an affair with the Frenchman, Karl Oswald, who is madly in love with her. She tells Hermann of the affair, and tells him that it is necessary to maintain her ability to work the job, reminding him that he is her true love and husband. Oswald, however, finds out about Hermann and visits him in prison, where, we later find out, he told Hermann that when he gets out of prison, if he were to stay away from Maria until Oswald died, he would leave the rest of his fortune to him.
Maria is hurt but unswayed when she discovers that Hermann had left prison upon his release, and directly went to travel abroad, instead of waiting for her to come. She continues her work and her devotion to building a life for the two of them. But she has and continues to steadily change. She has become more materialistic, and less of the light-hearted woman she was at the beginning of the film. There comes even a moment where she accidentally places her purse into a flower arrangement, instead of the rose she was holding. She tells herself, "Don't get peculiar on me now," recognizing her own beginning instability. Lighting a cigarette on the gas stove, she blows out the flame, failing to turn off the gas.
When Oswald does finally die, Hermann returns to Maria, and she is overwhelmed, immediately turning to the role of his wife; giving him food, a place to sleep, etc . . . When they are interrupted by Oswald's business partner to have the will read. When Maria discovers the deal between Oswald and her husband, she sends the business partner away. After attempting to collect herself, she lights another cigarette and there is a sudden explosion, presumably killing her and Hermann.
Maria Braun's life after her marriage to Hermann can be seen as a mirror to that of Germany during the same time period. As she gives up her delusions of the war, that her husband will return home, so too, did the German people finally give up on their idealistic dream that had been fed to them by the Third Reich. Maria, desperate to find herself again and to support herself and her mother, finds a job working at a bar catering to the American occupational soldiers. Here, we see Germany begin to take in and cater to the Western capitalistic ideals in order to support itself. When Maria's love affair begins with Bill, this is the ultimate sign of Germany's embrace of America, in the sense that they had just lost their own identity and needed the support of another to help them. It's interesting to note that, just as she does when she inform Bill of the death of her husband, in every moment of the film that Maria is shown condolence or emotional support, she simply stands, numbly, not reciprocating. It's as if she, as a mirror for Germany, represents the emotional numbness that Germany portrayed during that time. They gave little reaction to all that had come of the war and did not really react in any way to what happened to them over the course of the next few years.
When Hermann returns home, Maria looks as if she has just had a reawakening. Standing trial, she informs the judge that she was fond of Bill, that she loved her husband. This is very symbolic of Germany's reconnection with itself. They did not want to fully cast off their identity, but were willing to adopt to some of the American ideals. Yet, Hermann's immediate surrender also shows Germany's unwillingness or continuing inability to come to terms with the reality of the war.
Maria begins working for Oswald, becoming a clever and somewhat ruthless businesswoman, trading in her humble lifestyle of making sure she and her mother had enough to eat, to having lavish clothes and meals; Germany's buy into the bourgeois lifestyle of the American culture. During a family dinner, the radio plays over the conversations of the family, the chancellor Adenauer explaining that he was against the rearmament of Germany, the family barely listens, too preoccupied with the food and their gossip.
Later in the film, after Oswald's death (the first realizations to the German people of the consequences and eventual fate of the capitalist movement and their "miracle period",) Maria sits in a lavish restaurant eating dinner. When Adenauer again is heard over the radio talking about why the rearmament of Germany was essential, Maria stands in an attempt to walk away haughtily and only doubles over as she vomits. "The old capitalist ideas of property and freed and all the traditional bourgeois values were restored. The will to reform had all too soon exhausted itself," (Kaes, 102).
When the film ends with Maria's realization that the most successful part of her life, in her eyes, had been a mere monetary transaction between two men, that her choices and her life, had ultimately not been hers to make, she completely breaks down, and it is here, through intention or an unstable moment, she causes the explosion that kills her and Hermann and destroys that house that she had worked so hard to afford. Here, there is nothing left to reconcile or save. To Maria, much like to Fassbinder himself, all hope was lost and in that instance, there is no point to living anymore. Maria makes the ultimate decision, one that she alone can totally control; the decision to end her life and that of her husband's. ". . . the attitude of complacency and amnesia that Fassbinder wanted to destroy–a terrorist act that included self destruction, (Kaes, 103), was the only way he could perceive Germany's future.
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