The film was an epic portrayal of the life of Catherine the Great of Russia.

Brothers Ralph and Gaston are performing in a circus tightrope act, in a fight over a woman. Ralph escalates the tension even further when he tries to rescue a young tightrope walker from the cruelty of her stepfather, the circus ringmaster.

A young man shows his millionaire grandfather a film based on Molière's play "Tartuffe" in order to expose the old man's hypocritical governess who covets the young man's inheritance.

The movie follows two distinct plot lines until the two eventually merge: the first is that of the bored middle-aged man seeking a departure from monotony in his life; the second is that of the blind man and the little boy, his grandson, who are interdependent. None of the characters have been given names and are therefore referred to only by description. The city is an expressionistic nightmare, a dangerous and chaotic place.

Anna is a factory worker in East Germany, but her five-year-old son Jochen lives with his grandparents in the West. Anna wants him to live with her, so she abducts him. Along the way she meets Carl, who helps her cross the border, and they fall in love.

The film focuses on the leadership of the Great Powers of Europe in the days leading up to the outbreak of the First World War.

In 1920, an unknown 24-year-old woman was fished out of Berlin's Landwehr kanal after a suicide attempt. Since she has no papers and no answers to any questions, they soon assign them to the insane asylum Dallendorf. A co-patient believes she recognizes the Czar's daughter Anastasia Romanowa - who apparently was the only one who survived the murder of the tsar's family in 1918.

The Italian mountaineer Carel wants to be the first man to stand on the top of the Matterhorn. Since the climb is very difficult, he agrees to try it together with the British mountaineer Whymper. But due to an intrigue this agreement is dropped and the two man try it on the same day with two different teams and then disaster strikes.

A Czarist courier has to get across the Siberia frontier, threatened by Tartar invaders and a treacherous Russian helping them. Strogoff encounters several colorful characters along the way. German language version of the French film Michel Strogoff, adapting the novel by Jules Verne.