Devi, in her mid-thirties, is in the midst of a life crisis. She walks dogs in Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg district and has neither a husband nor a child nor a successful career to show for herself. She is also searching for her great childhood sweetheart, Jonny Miller, with whom she lived in a shared apartment, but all she knows is that he lives in New York. Her search proves fruitless. Devi decides to leave everything behind, sublet her "apartment with stove heating," and go straight to New York to look for Jonny Miller. But everything turns out differently...

Television film based on a short story by Christa Wolf.

For years, the carpenter Tillmann Rutenschneider has moved around. In 1932, at the age of thirty, he returns to his village in the Mark Brandenburg with a foreign wife. He builds a house and starts a family. It wasn't long before he became a victim of the new racial laws. His house is set on fire, his wife and child burn to death in the flames. He himself is sent to a concentration camp. After liberation, he returned to his home village, started a new family and built a new house. He joins forces with resettlers to form a cooperative, enforcing the land reform in his very own way. Tillmann falls into debt, gets into trouble and ends up in prison. He has to sell his house to pay off his debts. Released from prison, Tillmann Rutenschneider makes his way back to his village.