A depiction of class conflicts in Germany between 1918 and 1945. The Spartacist Erwin is shot by officers in 1918, and his pregant working-class bride Marie begins a new relationship with social democrat Geschke. Erwin's son Hans grows up to be a communist like his father, leading to bitter hatred...
Factory wife Jenny Treibel plans to engage her youngest, softened and weak son Leopold to teacher's daughter Corinna Schmidt. She wants to cross the plans of her daughter-in-law Helene, who wants to marry her younger sister to the brother-in-law. At the engagement party, Corinna learns from maid...
Fourteen-year-old Stefan Kolbe, along with his mother and sister, moves from an idyllic small town to the developing area of Berlin-Marzahn, where his father works as a construction worker. Stefan must find his way in a completely new environment and surrounded by strange people. Stefan gets to...
Bruno Kappel is an established attorney in Hamburg who, in earlier times, belonged to an anarchistic student circle. His former girlfriend Karin Kunze is still a member of this scene. Bruno, who still has left-wing beliefs, becomes her attorney. But when Karin gets into a shootout with the police,...
In spring 1946, Warsaw historian Wojtek arrives in a Polish provincial town to study the Renaissance. He soon becomes entangled in the fierce postwar power struggle between the Soviet-backed People’s Government—nationalizing industry and land—and reactionary exiled forces waging “bandit...
Paul Pospischiel loses his job in the great colliery collapse in the Ruhr, retrains and builds a new life for himself. One day, he receives a letter from his mother, which tears him from his comfort zone and triggers a serious conflict. She has discovered the man who sent his father to a...
For years, the carpenter Tillmann Rutenschneider has moved around. In 1932, at the age of thirty, he returns to his village in the Mark Brandenburg with a foreign wife. He builds a house and starts a family. It wasn't long before he became a victim of the new racial laws. His house is set on fire,...
August 24, 1937: a day in the life of expressionist sculptor and author Ernst Barlach (Fred Düren). Barlach lives in the small town of Güstrow, keeping to himself and wanting to steer clear of politics. On this day he learns that the Nazis have dragged his famous 1927 sculpture The Hovering Angel...
