Brothers Franz and Erich Sass grew up poor. Together with his brother Franz, Erich specializes in cracking safes. Erich spends the money with his hands full. In the meantime, the police have also become aware of the brothers. Pursued by Detective Fabich, they get deeper and deeper into criminal circles. A man called Adolf demands that the Sass brothers work for him. He blackmails them and has their father beaten to death. The brothers then agree to work together. However, Adolf plans to have them killed after the coup. The two brothers manage to escape; they are also able to flee from the police, who catch them while they are still breaking into the bank.

Ulrich Mühe plays a German businessman who was born completely without scruples. This makes him an eminently suitable candidate for success in the chaotic years after World War I. The shameless man's story is contrasted with that of his polar opposite, a Jewish anarchist.

Schtonk! is a farce of the actual events of 1983, when Germany's Stern magazine published, with great fanfare, 60 volumes of the alleged diaries of Adolf Hitler – which two weeks later turned out to be entirely fake. Fritz Knobel (based on real-life forger Konrad Kujau) supports himself by faking and selling Nazi memorabilia. When Knobel writes and sells a volume of Hitler's (nonexistent) diaries, he thinks it's just another job. When sleazy journalist Hermann Willié learns of the diaries, however, he quickly realizes their potential value... and Knobel is quickly in over his head. As the pressure builds and Knobel is forced to deliver more and more volumes of the fake diaries, he finds himself acting increasingly like the man whose life he is rewriting. The film is a romping and hilarious satire, poking fun not only at the events and characters involved in the hoax (who are only thinly disguised in the film), but at the discomfort Germany has with its difficult past.

A poignant film essay about 'superfluous people' facing up to a moment of crisis in their lives.

A Jewish professor returning from U.S. exile watches his Berlin university descend into militant ideological coercion during the 1968 reform struggles and ultimately decides to leave Germany again.

When Michael Rosenzweig, a working-class German Jew, is charged with the murder of a neo-Nazi leader, he and his family find themselves fighting for justice in the face of a brick wall of prejudice.