Paul is unhappily married to a beautiful but ignorant woman who cheats on him. Paula, who has two children from different fathers, is in a relationship of convenience with a tire salesman. When Paula and Paul meet in a bar, they fall in love.
After causing a deadly hit-and-run motorcycle accident, Conny Schenk spends two years in prison, where he is able to complete a printing apprenticeship and is released early for good behavior.
A new world full of excitement and temptation opens up for 18-year-old Erika (Doris Abeßer) when her father flees from Krüselin, a small village in Brandenburg, to West Berlin, taking his daughter with him.
Berlin, early 1930s. Lissy (Sonja Sutter), a young woman raised in a socialist working-class family, marries a clerk who promises her a better life. During the depression, however, he gets fired and can’t find a new job.
Documentary footage is intercut at a breathless pace to tell the story of Berlin’s reconstruction post-WWII from the East German perspective.
Ewald Honig (Erwin Geschonneck) can't break his bad habit. Hardly has he crossed over into the GDR when the strapping, well-built man in his late fifties once again starts courting ladies with fraudulent intentions.
Sonya, an art student, loves the med student Dieter. And Siegi, a factory worker, loves the bricklayer Eddie. At a lavish Carnival party at East Berlin’s art school an unintentional exchange of partners begins.