GDR border guard Gunter Rist is a young man from humble homes. During a swimming competition he meets Penny, a professor’s daughter from a good family, and they fall in love. However, their different social backgrounds get in the way of their happiness: Penny’s friends make it obvious that they are not willing to accept Gunter in their group. Although Penny takes Gunter’s side, she doubts if love can overcome all obstacles. In this state, she falls for the advances of her ex-boyfriend Bob and joins him on vacation. In the meantime, Gunter has an accident and is hospitalized. In the hospital, he meets the nurse Li who seems to be perfect for him.

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.

North of Neuruppin lies the Ruppiner Schweiz, the smallest “Swiss” area on German soil. Fontane loved the seclusion and enigmatic appeal of this region’s landscape. As an idyllic recreational and holiday region, it attracts countless tourists every year. But the industry has left its mark: what were previously common sights in the wild can only now be found by vacationers in museums or small zoos. A film about a regional landscape, its history, and how people treat it.

At the beginning of the 50s, two extremely disparate men meet in a private sanatorium for consumptives: an officer in the People's Police, Josef Heiliger; and a young Protestant curate, Hubertus Koschenz. On account of their consumption, they have to share a room. Initially, this is the only thing they have in common. The film explores Hubertus's struggle with his sexuality within the context of both the church and the socialist state.

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 study of German 19th Century Romantic art through the writings and paintings of Carl David Friedrich and his fellow artist, Carl Gustav Carus.

At the end of the 1950s, the production of optics in the German Democratic Republic has reached top quality and instigates interest in the West. When national demand rises strongly and at the same time the export to South America heavily decreases, the Volkspolizei - the GDR police force - starts to look into the case. Two seemingly unrelated cases are the starting point for the investigation by second lieutenant Schellenberg of the department for optics racketeering: An old woman who was arrested in the Berlin city railway for trying to smuggle a pair of binoculars to West Berlin, and a dead person in an area of allotments who was involved in obscure dealings with optical devices.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was the author of Werther, the romantic novel that was transformed into a play during Goethe's lifetime and which initiated the whole German romantic movement. The book's story tells of young love and suicide. In this East German film, based on a book by Thomas Mann, Lotte (Lilli Palmer) was the woman who served as the model for the heroine in the novel Werther. She comes to Goethe's hometown for a visit, and her experiences there eerily re-create episodes from the book. Goethe comes across as a pompous old bore, and his friends as pandering sycophants, in this very proper communist party-sponsored, anti-heroic movie.

When the two children of the Menzel family are found murdered, the parents come under suspicion of having killed their own children. The fact that the father Andreas is an alcoholic and the mother Katrin has been having an affair for years only makes them even more guilty in the eyes of the public, also thanks to local reporting...

The story of Vera Lenz, a young and very attractive woman who is the daughter of a pastor and comes from a small coastal village on the North Sea (FRG). She is intelligent, determined, but also hungry for adventure, and she fascinates the world of men. She has developed into an accomplished secretary with excellent foreign language skills - predestined for an international career. Her meeting with Colonel Shelvin paves the way for this: Vera is able to take up a position at NATO headquarters in Brussels and, thanks to her achievements, she travels to many countries and meets countless interesting people.