The impoverished and homeless orphan girl Anna Barbara sets out in search of the mysterious golden thaler. The rag collector Hans Geiz offers her the promise of it if she toils in his underground kingdom for three years.

In a small Saxon town after the Second World War, the former chimney sweep Toni tries to survive on the black market and meets the pusher Ginfizz. Together they initially trade in flour before embarking on a riskier plan: they are to rescue machines from Soviet expropriation for the mill owner Hartmann by transporting them in hidden trucks. In the process, they become entangled in various adventures, from rescuing orphans to transporting pigs, while being constantly pursued by the young policewoman Gisela, who wavers between her professional duty and her attraction to Toni. After Ginfizz is caught and the others remain temporarily free, they help to get the mill up and running again to avert a food shortage.

The blind psychologist Tom Leschek and the therapist Jessica van der Laan are after their first successful mission, a team that is again requested when a suicide wants to plunge from a skyscraper. The young woman was held captive for months in a basement prison by arms dealer Hübner as a slave. Tom tries to convince the desperate not to jump. When she flees again and shoots Hübner, she takes Tom hostage.

Young construction worker Ralf Reider leaves his home village Katzsprung in the Rhön mountains during the "Berlin Initiative". In the capital, he wants to earn enough money in construction to build his own house for his wife and his child. But Ralf is an unconventional character who soon becomes an outsider because of his behaviour.

The young Friedrich Freiherr von Kuhlbanz died almost 300 years ago, but he is cursed beyond death. "I will not rot in my grave if I have committed the murder of the shepherd Dühn", the squire once swore and became a legend as the mummy of Roggelin. One night, Maja meets the ghost of Friedrich in the crypt. And with his sad story, he is able to win her over to help him. Maja is determined to prove Friedrich's innocence.

The son of a farmer is bathed in his blood in front of an isolated mountain hut. There is no record of the attacker. Two investigators disappear without a trace. Years later, policeman Brenner sets out to find his colleagues.

Winter 1968. Historian Dr. Dallow is released from prison. He is still trying to cope with and understand why he was put behind bars for 21 months for defamation of the state. His supposed "crime:" for five minutes he accompanied a cabaret chanson on the piano. The film shows what "ordinary socialism" was like, letting the audience feel the threat under which the people in the GDR had to live over many years.

Johann Gottfried Schadow is only in his early twenties when he is put in charge of the royal sculptor's workshop in Prussia's capital Berlin. He is supported in this position above all by the fair ladies.

After 50 years, Marek remembers his dangerous adventure as a five-year-old, when he and his friend Itzek left a Polish transit camp one night in 1942 – a few days before their evacuation to Auschwitz – to go get the toys they forgot at the ghetto. Based on Becker's personal memories and his 1980 short story "The Wall."