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 flamboyant comedy about love, work and money—revealing that the "planned" economy produced some unconventional entrepreneurial methods.

The fun-loving, 26-year-old architect Franziska Linkerhand (Simone Frost) works for a famous professor. Yet, she feels restrained by her dependence on him and longs to take risks. When her marriage falls apart, she moves to a small town for a fresh start. Franziska approaches her new life with vigor and idealism. Many of her colleagues have given in to the dictates of economic restrictions and prefabricated apartment blocks; but Franziska hangs onto her ideals and, as in her private life, is not willing to compromise…

A train travels through the vastness of Russia, a train with German prisoners of war returning home, and Viktor Kleist, a young German communist from an intellectual home in Munich, travels back home with them. During the journey, the stations on his way to Lenin wake up again.

A young woman named Karin Schröder studied biophysics in Moscow and has now returned to the GDR with her diploma. She is thirsty for action, eager to work and now wants to put her specialized knowledge into practice. But at Professor Angerer's institute, where she ends up, there are no opportunities to apply her knowledge. Although Angerer shows her a safe route up the career ladder, Karin sees this more as a means of keeping her quiet - so she turns down the offer. On her own initiative, she goes in search of allies in order to find her way after all. Angerer then instructs her to abandon her self-initiated work - which leads to both professional and personal disaster for the young woman.