A flamboyant comedy about love, work and money—revealing that the "planned" economy produced some unconventional entrepreneurial methods.

The merchant's daughter Constanze, begs her father to ask a lion for a favor. Her father approaches the lion who agrees to his request with one condition: that he send the first person he meets upon his return home to the lion's den. It is Constanze. Against her father's will she goes to the lion and discovers that he is an enchanged prince and that only a woman's love can release him from the spell.

The school authorities want to read success stories in director Joachim Faber's reports. But they cannot simply be produced on an assembly line. Pupils, for example, use the wrong tone. The matter draws circles until the superiors finally talk about refusal to work. Director Faber is caught between the efforts to resolve the conflict with pedagogical means and the pressure from above.

In 1923, Ludwig Bodmer, a young man returning from the war, works in the gravestone company of his comrade Georg Kroll during the period of inflation. Business is going well, but inflation robs them of their profits and people suffer under the circumstances of the time. The "lost generation" in particular, the survivors of the First World War, of which Ludwig is one, struggles to find a place in society.

Hösch, a young man with a camera, hangs around various mansions in Berlin’s Grunewald neighborhood, taking pictures of things worth stealing.

Hans Paschke has been putting up with his wife for years. The charmer and womanizer Hans Paschke is good-looking and has perfect manners, but has nothing to do with work. But he knows how to skillfully bring his natural advantages 'to the woman'. His wife Marion tolerates his behavior until she catches him in flagrante delicto. The master goldsmith Elke encourages the now penniless Hans to enter into a marriage of convenience with the widowed doctor Marianne in exchange for a valuable family heirloom.

The war is over and soldier Christoffel has no prospects for the future and no money. He doesn't know what to do, so he meets the devil. He offers him a pact: Christoffel's pockets are always full of money, but he is not allowed to wash, cut his hair or nails for seven years and he is not allowed to sleep in a bed. If he doesn't keep to all these things, he will be forever devoted to the devil. Christoffel accepts the condition. Relieved of his worries about the future, Christoffel sets off. However, he soon becomes lonely. Society avoids him; he is dirty, unkempt and smelly. He only finds a place to stay in prison. He pays off the debts of a goldsmith, which wins him the heart of Katarina, the goldsmith's daughter. However, Christoffel is aware of his appearance and leaves her. After seven years, he is finally cleansed by the devil himself and returns to her as a well-groomed man.