This elaborate two-part television film features a section from the life of communist worker leader Ernst Thälmann. It begins with the bloody riots on May 1, 1929 in Berlin, in which police officers shot at demonstrating workers, and ends with February 7, 1933, when Thälmann appeared as a speaker at the illegal meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany in goat neck. This period was marked by the struggle of the Communists against the ever stronger National Socialists and the rise of Adolf Hitler.

A teenager is found murdered, and the examining doctor recognizes her son's knife. The film works its way back to reveal how this situation came about; a rare treatment of the taboo subject of youth criminality in Socialist society.

Two years after reunification: A married couple suspects the husband's brother-in-law, a former Stasi officer, of being responsible for the husband's interrogations. As an insurance agent, the ex-officer has made it in the "new" Germany, while the couple are among the victims of reunification and their daughter also suffers from the chemical legacy of the GDR. Events escalate at a family celebration, but the real victims are not the parents; it is the children who have to pay the price.

It is a terrible disaster! Due to a series of wrong decisions, the ferry Castor gets caught in a sea storm and sinks. The tragedy is already foreshadowed in small details: first there is an hour-long delay before departure, then some trucks are not properly secured and on the bridge there is a heated discussion between Captain Eriksen and his deputy van Damme about how to deal with the storm warning received. The captain's sudden heart attack complicates the situation. The next day, it is learned ashore that the Castor has sunk. Herwegh, the head of the commission of inquiry, then tries to find out who is morally responsible for the disaster and who the real culprits are. In the process, several human dramas unfold...

The actors Martin and Maria have not been a couple for a long time, but they didn't get very far without each other. While he spends his time with alcohol, numerous affairs and reveries about his own film, she is bored with her young lover. When Maria surprisingly finds the loot of a bank robbery in the trash, she takes the opportunity to get rid of her lover, only to run into her ex-husband shortly afterwards. The old passion flares up again and Martin suddenly sees the chance to finally realize his long-held script.