When Andreas arrives in the remote valley in the Austrian Alps, he is only about four years old - nobody knows for sure. He grows up to become a skilled farmhand and, as a young man, joins a work crew that builds one of the first mountain railroads, bringing light and noise to the valley along with electricity. He also finds the love of his life in Marie, but their happiness is short-lived. Only many years later, when Andreas embarks on his final journey, she is with him once again. And in amazement Andreas looks back at all the years that lie behind him.
As a forestry student doing an internship, Anja Grimm ends up in that remote area in the Upper Palatinate Forest, where she went on vacation with her parents as an eight-year-old girl and her father disappeared without a trace. Her job is to take soil samples to create a soil map. At one point in the forest floor she comes across abnormal irregularities. Not long after their arrival, a brutal murder occurs. Anja soon arouses suspicion and hostility not only among the villagers with her suspicion that the perpetrator knows something about her father's fate and with her questions about the atypical soil composition in the forest clearing. Even the police react extremely reservedly to their investigations. And when it turns out that the young woman can read the signs of the forest like an open book, forces mobilize in the village who are apparently ready for anything because there is a dark secret that needs to be kept.
Not an easy decision! District Administrator Hans Schuierer from the Upper Palatinate first opposed his own political line in 1981 and finally against the entire Bavarian Free State and Prime Minister Strauss. Because the planned reprocessing plant Wackersdorf promised 3,000 new jobs for the structurally weak region - but what if these are associated with massive health and ecological damage for future generations? Isn't it then the duty of a politician and citizen to resist?
After his mother’s death, the 12-year-old Max, son of pharmacist Sternheim, wishes for a pet. One day a dog appears in Max’s life. By his power of persuasion he is allowed to keep this dog and names him “Bello”. In the meantime a new tenant, Verena Lichtblau, moves into Sternheim’s house, and Max is not happy. But further Sternheim has got a present, that’s a special mixture. After he has ruined Edgar’s harvest with the mixture, the next accident happened: Bello drinks from the mixture, and so he transforms to a human. With Max’s help, “Mr. Bello” continues a human-life. And Mr. Bello returns Max’s enjoying of life again. But outside of Sternheim’s house Mr. Bello gets in trouble, and there the story begins.
Austria in the mid-1950s. Seamstress Elfi Redlich and her two children are about to emigrate to America with occupation officer Hal when her husband, missing for eleven years, returns home from Siberia. Factory owner Ulmendorff is deported to Russia on his way to his niece Valerie's wedding as a result of an intrigue by his employee Hasak. Hasak's joy is short-lived, as the Jewish owner of the factory asserts his ownership.
When a hunter sent back to the prehistoric era runs off the path he must not leave, he causes a chain reaction that alters history in disastrous ways.
One of the most spectacular and renowned conductors of the 1930s, Wilhelm Furtwangler's reputation rivaled that of Toscanini's. After the war, he was investigated as part of the Allies' de-Nazification programme. In the bombed-out Berlin of the immediate post-war period, the Allies slowly bring law and order to bear on an occupied Germany. An American major is given the Furtwangler file, and is told to find everything he can and to prosecute the man ruthlessly. Tough and hard-nosed, Major Steve Arnold sets out to investigate a world of which he knows nothing.
One Saturday, the Slurb, a strange little creature with a proboscis nose, enters Mr. Taschenbier's life. Slurb, who immediately adopts the shy Mr. Taschenbier as his "daddy," is, however, his sheer opposite: he is cheeky and chaotic and throws his well-ordered life into sheer chaos. But when Taschenbier discovers that he can fulfill all his wishes with the help of Slurb's blue freckles, his life suddenly changes. He appeases his bad-tempered landlady, Mrs. Rotkohl, and he can finally get one over on his nasty neighbor, Mr. Lürcher. Everything could be so nice if Mr. Taschenbier didn't fall in love with his pretty colleague Mrs. März and if the Slurb didn't almost burst with jealousy...
Martha is a single woman who lives for one passion: cooking. The head chef at a chic restaurant, Martha has no time for anything - or anyone - else. But Martha's solitary life is shaken when a fateful accident brings her sister's eight-year-old daughter, Lina, to her doorstep.
Teen brother and sister who rarely get to see each other fall in love with one another one summer.
Luise, called Pünktchen, and Anton are closest of friends. Being the daughter of a wealthy surgeon, young Pünktchen lives in a great house. Her mother, who always travels through the world more for public relation reasons than for the social tasks she pretends to fulfill, is never available to her as a mother. Anton, son of a single and sick mother in financial trouble, does his best to help her out of it by working late. Pünktchen decides to help her only friend (as nobody else would anyway) and starts singing in public places. Trouble arises when Anton can't resist stealing a golden lighter and Pünktchen's secret life is discovered by her parents. Two troubled families finally can see the need for actions to be taken.
The dynamic PR-agent Hannah is starting up her dream-job in the Hochstedt Company producing toys and soon falls in love with her firm's junior executive director, Wolfgang. But while Hannah is still totally immersed in this passionate love affair, she unknowingly and progressively gets caught in a web of danger. Behind the harmless dolls and teddy-bears produced by the company a deadly secret is revealed. And for Hannah, the game of love suddenly turns bloody.
East-Berlin, 1961, shortly after the erection of the Wall. Konrad, Sophie and three of their friends plan a daring escape to Western Germany. The attempt is successful, except for Konrad, who remains behind. From then on, and for the next 28 years, Konrad and Sophie will attempt to meet again, in spite of the Iron Curtain. Konrad, who has become a reputed Astrophysicist, tries to take advantage of scientific congresses outside Eastern Germany to arrange encounters with Sophie. But in a country where the political police, the Stasi, monitors the moves of all suspicious people (such as Konrad's sister Barbara and her husband Harald), preserving one's privacy, ideals and self-respect becomes an exhausting fight, even as the Eastern block begins its long process of disintegration.
Walter Faber has survived a crash with an airplane. His next trip is by ship. On board this ship he meets the enchanting Sabeth and they have a passionate love affair. Together they travel to her home in Greece, but the rational Faber doesn't know what fate has in mind for him for past doings.