While they are stuck in the elevator, three employees of a TV station tell each other stories about supernatural phenomena. They tell of the “dream girlfriend” of a 16-year-old girl who fell victim to a crime 33 years ago; of a bully who turns out to be an alien; and of a comic artist who falls victim to his mirror doppelganger.
Set in a garrison town in Austria before 1914, is the story of the unfortunate love between simple lieutenant Anton Hofmiller and Edith, the paralyzed daughter of the count, who is the richest man in the region.
During the time of the Peasants' Wars, the free knight Götz von Berlichingen gets into all kinds of private and political entanglements when he defends the Bishop of Bamberg. He is declared an enemy of the empire and ostracized as a robber. Insurgent peasants, of whom he becomes the leader, also betray him by attacking a town against the condition that no violence be used.
Three people rob a bank to help a day care center that's in debt. Wolf is captured, Werner identified, police suspect Christa is the third. She and Werner ask Hans, a clergyman, to launder the money and give it to the kindergarten. He refuses. They try Ingrid, Christa's friend, who tries to help, but the school rejects the money. When tragedy strikes Werner, Hans helps Christa bolt to a collective in Portugal. Ingrid visits her; their relationship makes the collective nervous, so she returns to Germany and ceases living in hiding. The police are still looking for her and so is a witness to the robbery, Lena, a bank clerk. Lena's interest brings Christa's second awakening.
In the bourgeois circles of Europe after the Great War, can anything save the modern man? Harry Haller, a solitary intellectual, has all his life feared his dual nature of being human and being a beast. He's decided to die on his 50th birthday, which is soon. He's rescued from his solipsism by the mysterious Hermine, who takes him dancing, introduces him to jazz and to the beautiful and whimsical Maria, and guides him into the hallucinations of the Magic Theater, which seem to take him into Hell. Can humour, sin, and derision lead to salvation?