Early 1980s: Martin Siedler, a successful press officer for a leading pharmaceutical company, believes he has the trust of his boss Walter Lange. But then he finds out that his company's supposed miracle drug, which he is promoting, carries a deadly risk. This is proven by a secret, internal study, which his boss also knows about. How should Martin deal with this explosive information? What does he risk by going public with it? How strong is conscience? Drama based on real events about one of the biggest German medical scandals.
Conny Stein from the ordnance disposal service in Dresden has to defuse a bomb on his last day of work before retirement, on a construction site in a power plant. In the process, he discovers a girl who had previously come to the city in a minibus full of refugees and does not speak a word.
The story of Elly Beinhorn, the first German aviator ever to fly around the world which made her a national hero in the 1930s.
In the middle of the night, a special police force storms the bedroom of management consultant Juliane Schubert. Just returned from a business trip to the Middle East, Juliane is questioned after her arrest by the commissioners Theissen and Hindrichs: They should have rented apartments and cars that should serve to prepare a terrorist attack. The evidence is overwhelming. Has anyone gained access to the businesswoman's computer, stolen her virtual identity and used it for criminal purposes?
In September 1974, at the Bösebrücke border crossing between East and West Germany, Heike and Ulrich Molitor, along with their two little children, are caught trying to escape to the West. As a punishment the parents are presented with a terrible decision: they will be permitted to leave for West Germany with their seven-year-old son Klaus, but their two-year-old daughter Miriam must remain in East Germany and will be given up for adoption. If the Molitors refuse these conditions, they will both be imprisoned for a year—and both their children will be taken from them. This situation forms the basis for an emotional story in which various destinies in East and West intertwine, reaching a dramatic climax with the fall of the Berlin Wall.
When a notorious German serial killer is captured after committing some of the most heinous acts against humanity ever imaginable, a farmer and police officer from a sleepy rural community on the outskirts of Berlin is drawn into the case as he searches for the answers to a murder that has shaken his tight-knit community.
Hans Wolgast is executed with a shot in the head in the idyllic town of Husum to Mozart's Magic Flute. His half-brother, Inspector Anton Glauberg, immediately suspects that the shadows of the family past have caught up with him because Hans was a member of the RAF. Without initially disclosing that he not only knew the dead man but was even related to him, Glauberg begins to investigate, supported by the young, attractive but inexperienced BKA officer Paula Reinhardt. The traces lead to Berlin to the scattered remnants of the RAF and its still functioning cable groups. Wolgast lived there in a shared apartment before he, like so many former terrorists, fled to the GDR in the 1980s. A former roommate of Hans Veith Seewald points out the parallel to Glauberg to a murder case from 1978.
In April of 1945, Germany stands at the brink of defeat with the Russian Army closing in from the east and the Allied Expeditionary Force attacking from the west. In Berlin, capital of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler proclaims that Germany will still achieve victory and orders his generals and advisers to fight to the last man. When the end finally does come, and Hitler lies dead by his own hand, what is left of his military must find a way to end the killing that is the Battle of Berlin, and lay down their arms in surrender.
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.
A group of young people draws straws to see who'll steal some cigarettes. With this theft, Sebastian starts a bizarre, symbolic odyssey through a sclerotic world, in search of himself and of truth and justice. When he tries withdrawing from one social paradigm, he finds himself caught in another.