This biographical film is set in 1937, with Fallada suffering the effects of living under a microscope. The film details his decline, as he is intermittently imprisoned and threatened in order to motivate him to write for the Fatherland. Even the attention of his kind, patient wife and loving children begin to feel oppressive to him. This is one of the few films to take a serious, in-depth look at the tribulations of a creative artist pulled in all different directions by the real world.

Because car dealership owner Brausewetter is in financial difficulties, he quickly discontinues the small bus line that he runs on the side in the Harz Mountains. Drivers Benno and Axel are out of a job. But then Benno's deceased aunt leaves him a million euros. The bus driver wants to use it to take over the line himself...

A poor peasant woman lives in a cabin in the woods. She grows two rose-trees in front of her house, one with white roses and one with red. When the flowers bloomed she had two children, both girls. She named them both after the trees, Snow White and Rose Red respectively. They have an adventure involving a bad dwarf and a bewitched bear.

Melissa (38) and Nadja (23) live together in Berlin. Melissa, a tomboyish beauty, is professionally successful but privately rather frustrated and damaged by men. Nadja is an intelligent, sensitive girl who likes to hide her gentle femininity behind a facade of aggressive cheekiness, and the harmonious coexistence of the two women is disrupted by Nadja's sudden desire to have a child. The hunt for the ideal father for her "elite baby" begins. He should be strong, intelligent, sensitive and lovable. Just as they imagine the only acceptable man who has ever existed in their opinion: Albert Einstein. But unfortunately he is already dead! In the search for their "EINSTEIN", men are presented to us with their quirks and neuroses, victims of our "modern industrial society".

In 1787, Friedrich Schiller published his story about a prince who manipulates, seduces, and ultimately falls victim to a murderous intrigue in Rococo Venice. The prince, an enlightened ruler with a penchant for worldly things, travels to the funeral of his brother, a sometimes mentally confused, generally incompetent, alcohol-addicted good-for-nothing who died in a brawl. Having come to fulfill a tedious duty, the prince falls in love with a mysterious beauty against a romantic backdrop of dreamy gondolas, castles, and masks, and she drives him mad. He, who is usually guided by incorruptible judgment, becomes increasingly entangled in the finely woven web of his invisible enemies from the nobility and clergy. For, despite all reason, it is a matter of succession to the throne and thus of power.

The cheerful Dr. Michael Mangold finally wants to marry his partner Lena Stern and get a whole bunch of children with her. One morning, two girls with a baby and a small dog are at the door. Actually, the kids wanted after the death of their parents to their uncle Jörg, Lena's ex-fiancé. Of necessity, Michael and Lena temporarily take the little ones with them. This kind of blessing soon brings in the orderly life of the couple for terrible confusion.

Young Uli Merkel is an engineer and inventor. He has a wife and child and is primarily interested in his career. One day, he receives a strange assignment from general manager Zeim. He is to track down the former chief designer Heiner Rudolf in order to take his inventions out of his pocket. Rudolf, ridiculed at the time for his forward-looking work, had taken all his documents with him when he left. Now they are needed to fulfill an important export order. In his search for Rudolf, Uli begins to realize that he, the boy, is being used. He finally finds Rudolf as a gravedigger on the island of Rügen. The encounter reinforces Uli's doubts about the moral integrity of his mission. He gets out and stays there, while Rudolf accepts an offer from the general manager.