Maria tells her former colleague, Hanna, that she has undergone a cancer operation but is now cured. Soon after, she suffers a relapse. The doctors believe that she should be told the truth about her condition, and Hanna is willing to do so. For Maria, it is the beginning of several long, agonizing weeks until she is ready to accept that she has only a very small amount of time left to live. In the meantime, Hanna has to decide how she can help her friend die; an almost unbearable decision, but once made she carries it out to the last consequence.

A love triangle forms between post-Enlightenment writer Friedrich Schiller and two sisters -- one who became his wife, and the other, his biographer.

Weimar, 1921. The life of 20-year-old Lotte Brendel seems to be predetermined. Her father sees her as a future wife and mother on the side of a man who is to take over the parental carpentry business. But the idiosyncratic Lotte joins a group of young artists against the will of her family, applies at the Bauhaus and is accepted. The Weimar Bauhaus, under the direction of the visionary Walter Gropius, aspires not only to combine arts and crafts, but also to find the place for the "New Man". In the student Paul Seligmann Lotte finds a supporter and her great love.

Dr. Sonja Martin is a neurosurgeon at a large clinic in Leipzig. She loves her job. But she has bigger plans: She wants to become a clinic director. She pursues this career goal with ambition. But she has lost sight of the important things in life. Sonja gradually realizes this when she involuntarily has to put up her grandchildren Clarissa, Paula and little Benedikt in her apartment for a few days.