Father Scherzer generally buries himself in the books of the castle library, which he is responsible for managing. He is a warm-hearted but somewhat overwhelmed father to his five daughters, ranging from a preschooler to two teenage girls to a successful press photographer who flirts with a dashing dentist. While he is trying to sell the castle to an overbearing American millionaire, the housekeeper quits, and the youth welfare office insists on discipline and order in the five-girl household.

In a small German village in the middle of large moors, there is an old legend of a young woman having sunk in the wetland after being raped by a Swedish intruder of the Thirty Years' war. Now young Dorothee, falling in love with the architect Ludwig, is harassed by an obnoxious, rich farmer Eschmann. The brutal man is ready to do anything to get the maiden. The history is repeating itself, as Eschmann follows Dorothee to the moors after his crime.

A romantic drama directed by Hans Deppe.

The wealthy widow Tilla Haidt lives on her estate in Schleswig-Holstein. She mourns her missing son Michael. One day, a young man suddenly appears at her door and changes her whole life. He is also called Michael, is an orphan, and is looking for shelter with her. Gradually, he becomes a substitute son to her, and in her imagination even her real son. But bitter disappointments await her.

Prussia in the late 19th century: Eighteen-year-old Effi Briest, the daughter of a middle-class family, marries District Administrator Geert von Innstetten. But her marriage to this much older, highly dutiful man does not make her happy. In the small town where Innstetten serves, Effi is socially isolated. Then she meets the charming Major von Crampas...

This German slice-of-life drama is based on a very real postwar dilemma. At the time the film was made, there were over 3000 children living in Germany who'd been fathered by African American GIs. Referred to as "mischlings," these children were often treated as outcasts because of their illegitimacy and skin color. One such mischling is Toxi (played by herself), who is sent to live with her American father when her mother dies. At first, Toxi is welcomed with opened arms, but the father, who already has two children, has neither the time nor the money to care for the girl. Toxi is then bundled off to an orphanage, sparking a serious rift in her father's family. By concentrating on a highly fictionalized plotline, Toxi tends to ignore the thousands of other mischlings whose lives are far more complex and tragic than that of the film's central character.