Siegfried, son of King Siegmund of Xanten, travels to Worms, capital of the Burgundian kingdom, to ask King Gunther for the hand of his sister, the beautiful Kriemhild.
When Kriemhild, thirsty for revenge, marries to Etzel, king of the Huns, she invites King Gunther and his court to visit them, intending to finally take the life of the man responsible of her disgrace.
Hinrich, the son of a feudal German landowner, falls in love with the beautiful daughter of one of his father's serfs despite opposition from both families. But when he actually offers marriage to her, this is going too far. The return of his brother Detlev, with an unscrupulous aristocratic bride...
Due to an intrigue spun by his grandmother and two cousins, the engagement between the officer Hans and his fiancée Traute breaks up. His fiancée is said to have been unfaithful during his 4-week absence on official business. The fabricated rumors allege an affair between Traute and Oberleutnant...
It begins with a Tannhäuser performance and ends with the premiere of The Tales of Hoffmann. In between a young ingénue cast in her first big role, the Hoffmann rehearsals, the theatre director and his stage director exchanging cynicisms, a budding love affair. Gründgens at his most repulsive,...
A working-class couple with four children live in extreme poverty in a rear building. When the woman becomes pregnant again, she goes to a young doctor and asks him to terminate the pregnancy, as the child would be too much of a burden for her. The doctor refuses to perform the procedure because it...
The engineer Karl Hartmann invents a new, gigantic brown coal excavator. He discovers that there are large deposits below his home country and decides to use the excavator there.