East-Berlin, 1961, shortly after the erection of the Wall. Konrad, Sophie and three of their friends plan a daring escape to Western Germany. The attempt is successful, except for Konrad, who remains behind. From then on, and for the next 28 years, Konrad and Sophie will attempt to meet again, in spite of the Iron Curtain. Konrad, who has become a reputed Astrophysicist, tries to take advantage of scientific congresses outside Eastern Germany to arrange encounters with Sophie. But in a country where the political police, the Stasi, monitors the moves of all suspicious people (such as Konrad's sister Barbara and her husband Harald), preserving one's privacy, ideals and self-respect becomes an exhausting fight, even as the Eastern block begins its long process of disintegration.

One night when seeking his estranged wife, Hoffmann goes to the youth center where she works. The police are there rounding up radicals who frequent the center - Hoffmann runs into the building and ends up being shot in the head. He awakens with brain trauma, partially paralyzed and unable to speak. The police accuse him of stabbing an officer; the radicals herald him as an innocent victim of police brutality. During his slow recovery at the hospital, Hoffmann must piece together his life and struggle to remember the events of that night.

Miss Giehse, an elderly teacher in a boarding school, tries with a lot of good will for her student Robert. The boy seems strangely withdrawn and depressed to her. Robert, whose behavior can be traced back to his parental home, which lacks orderly family relationships, disrupts the lessons with his defiant and rebellious behavior. All her attempts to investigate the causes of this behavior, however, only lead to increasingly serious misunderstandings. In almost hysterical exaggeration, provoked by Robert's tormenting behavior, she finally believes that he is trying to poison her and knocks the boy down during a break. The principal of the boarding school inadvertently witnesses this incident and dismisses Miss Giehse after a heated controversy. The teacher does not overcome the shame of the dismissal and the pain of her own actions and dies on the day she has to leave the boarding school on a trip with the school bus.

An East German man finds a way to cross the border between East and West Berlin. But when he succeeds in bringing his wife out as well, things are not quite as expected.

A man who grew up an orphan finally gets to meet his father: The psychopath Dr. Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz surgeon who performed genetic experiments on concentration camp refugees during WWII.

In the 1770s, Swiss farmer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi established a school for poor orphaned children in the Aargau. Up to total exhaustion he sacrificed himself for his pedagogical theories. Five years later, the project of the idealistic educator failed after bloody attacks of the French. In retrospect, the disappointed Pestalozzi experiences the last few months with "his" children.

An East German man finds a way to cross the border between East and West Berlin. But when he succeeds in bringing his wife out as well, things are not quite as expected.