In 1928 Berlin, 19-year-old stenotypist Erna Halbe lands a prized typing job at Orga Privat. Thrust into the soul-killing monotony of a sprawling corporate office, she rallies her fellow typists to challenge unjust working conditions. Amid economic tremors foreshadowing the 1929 crash, Erna fights for workplace justice, and discovers first love in the city’s heady mix of hope and hardship.

Count Harro von Treuenfels is suspected of poisoning his wife. Griseldis von Ronach, his daughter's governess, falls in love with the count and sets out to find the real culprit.

The GDR has concluded an important agreement with a friendly country in the Middle East, in which it undertakes to supply and install pumping stations as a prerequisite for a large-scale irrigation system. This will enable the government in the Middle East to achieve its goal of intensifying cotton cultivation. Although details of the cooperation agreement are not yet to be made public, economic spies from the West German secret service have got wind of it and are now trying hard to destroy the Middle East's connection to socialist countries and push the desert state back into its isolated position. Through sabotage, they want to embarrass the GDR to the core – Project Aqua is underway...

In the Jim-Crow South, Val Xavier is a bass-playing drifter who retains a wild, compassionate spirit amid neon-lit decay. Nicknamed “Snake Skin” for his animal-hide jacket, Val seeks to shed the emptiness of wealthy nightclubs and, after turning thirty, yearns for a modest, purposeful life grounded in honest work.

In 1928 Berlin, 19-year-old stenotypist Erna Halbe lands a prized typing job at Orga Privat. Thrust into the soul-killing monotony of a sprawling corporate office, she rallies her fellow typists to challenge unjust working conditions. Amid economic tremors foreshadowing the 1929 crash, Erna fights for workplace justice, and discovers first love in the city’s heady mix of hope and hardship.

Inge Karsten receives an unexpected visit from her former student friend Margit from the West. She is even more surprised to hear that she is married to her stepbrother Herbert, who was long thought to be missing and whom she had almost forgotten. He last lived in Canada. This presents Inge's husband Horst, who has an important job as a military pilot, with a conflict of conscience. The situation is even more serious than it seems at first glance. In truth, Margit is an agent and the whole story is a staged game by the West German secret service...

Jürgen Fohrmann works as a hauer underground. In the course of the coal crisis, his mine closes - he loses the work. In this mood, his wife's prosperity thinking gets on his nerves - his marriage threatens to break. The dismissed coal buddy applys, first becomes an auxiliary worker, but then receives a job in an automated operation of the electrical industry and believes to have socially risen through this "clean work". Fohrmann quickly realizes that wearing a "white coat" is only seemingly better than the arduous work in the pit and understands that he can no longer stay out of the work struggles of the buddies.