The film describes the activity of an ABV of the People's Police in its section in East Berlin. A mixture of “positive” characters from the beginning, the extensively staged “owl”, who is introduced as a criminal and over the course of time, especially due to the influence of the ABV, develops into a good citizen, and incorrigible characters, with whom the ABV fails with its extensive attempts at rehabilitation and who are arrested after having committed again offenses.

The important German wood sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider (born around 1460) is considered to be artistically and socially established. He was a councillor in Würzburg and held several offices. In his works and in the way he conducted his office, he showed himself to be connected to the common people, who revered him. But he also had a patron in the art-loving Prince-Bishop Konrad von Thüngen. But when the peasants' uprising spread to Würzburg in 1525, Riemenschneider stood up for the rights of the peasants and opposed the use of soldiers, Thüngen became his bitter opponent. Although he initially flees from the superior forces, he returns after the uprising has been suppressed and imprisons Riemenschneider. Weeks later, he is released from prison. His hands were broken, but not his steadfastness.

Albert Hauptmann is an out of work waiter in Cologne who is often confused with a former Captain of the Nazi Army. Albert uses this to his advantage and becomes the Director of the Montan Corporation, and a member of the West German Parliament. Herr Karjanke, the real Captain, learns of Albert’s ruse, and wants to claim his "rightful" position in Parliament. But Karjanke cannot come forward until his politicking "Doppelganger" succeeds in passing an amnesty law for war criminals. When Albert is finally brought before a judge on charges of fraud, he learns that this own amnesty law does not apply to him.

A Jewish chief of surgery in 1933 Germany remains blind to the rising Nazi threat, dismissing political dissent from his son and a patient, until his family faces increasing anti-Semitic persecution.