The architect Daniel Brenner is in his late thirties when he receives his first challenging and lucrative commission: to design a cultural center for a satellite town in East-Berlin. He accepts the offer under the condition that he gets to choose who he works with. This way, he reunites with former colleagues and friends - most of them architects or students of architecture who have since chosen a different profession due to personal restraint or economic confinement. Together, they develop a concept which they hope will be more appealing to the public than the conventional and dull constructions common to the German Democratic Republic. However, their ambitious plans are once and again foiled by their conservative supervisors. As frustration grows, Daniel has trouble keeping his career in balance with his family-life: his wife Wanda wants to leave for West-Germany.

Otto Scheidel (Manfred Krug) has been captain of the Elbe steamer Jenissei for over twenty years, but his ship, the last of its kind, is going to be converted into a floating restaurant. Otto, whose his strong attachment to the ship has already cost him his relationship with his girlfriend Caramba (Renate Krößner), refuses to take another job and instead joins a railway construction brigade.

Using the example of three generations of a Hamburg working class family, the rise of the working class from the founding of the Wilhelmin Empire to the First World War, over the time of the Weimar Republic and National Socialism to the destruction of the Third Reich.

His passion for hunting almost spells doom for the sales manager of a GDR convenience store: his ambition to shoot a big buck just before the start of the closed season leads him to fall for a joke played by his son. He has tied horns to a prize-winning breeding goat, leading the hunter on the wrong track. While he tries to cover up the incident, there is a great deal of excitement in the village; resentment and schadenfreude arise, intrigues are played out and village gossip makes the rounds.

In 1896 the Berlin noble doctor Dr. Wilhelm Holtfreter takes over his well-to-do wife Mathilde and takes over the country doctor's office in the Prussian district of Westprignitz from the late Dr. Tochtenhagen. His decision was met with incomprehension everywhere.

The director of an art museum in Thuringia and an art dealer from Constance entered into an extremely lucrative business relationship. Director Trützschler illegally supplies Ms. Münzenberg with valuable works of art, which she smuggles into West Germany through an intermediary, abusing the transit routes. The business flourishes until they both fall into the CIA's intricate web. They are put under pressure and used to recruit a scientist from Jena. Will the GDR security forces succeed in thwarting the CIA's espionage operation...?

On one very fine sunny day, a fourth-grader Thomas, as always, is out of the house in the morning to get to school by subway. But on this day he has a too good mood and that, along with the good weather, prevents him get to the lessons. He decides to skip his station, and take a walk through Berlin.

Theme of this scenic documentation is the consistent preparation of the Franco-German War by Bismarck and leading Prussian military, who, with the help of the conservative and liberal Berlin press, created the mood in which the publication of the heavily redacted "Emser Depesche" showed an effect desired by Bismarck. The authenticity of the game plot is supported by documents and documentary material.

Russian soldier Grisha escapes from a German prisoner-of-war camp in the spring of 1917. He is caught and is to be shot as a spy. This decision is controversial. The dispute continues. Grisha is executed on the orders of the army high command.

Although at first Ina barely takes any notice of Matti, the two teenagers gradually fall in love at their dance classes and begin their first real relationship. Their parents are upset about this development and try to prevent their children from seeing each other. But Ina and Matti continue to meet in secret and their first sexual experience together brings mixed feelings for Ina.