Car mechanic Anton Grubske cunningly avoids being captured and taken to a POW camp in 1945. Upon returning to his village, he marries Liesel, the daughter of his former apprenticeship master, and takes over the workshop.
The opera singer Luitpold Löwenhaupt buys a goose to roast for Christmas dinner— a month early, in November! His children have other plans for the goose, whom they name Auguste or "Gustje"; they want to keep Gustje as a pet and playmate.
Two roommates in a private sanatorium in early-1950s East Germany are extremely different from one another. Josef is a communist policeman, while Hubertus is a Lutheran vicar. While Josef reads The Communist Manifesto, Hubertus prepares his sermon.
The beautiful and charming laundress Lurette is a well sought-after young woman in Ludwig XV’s Paris. Her heart is already taken, however, and she makes elaborate plans during Carnival to obtain the man she truly loves, the carpenter Campistrel.
Mother Wolffen, a washerwoman, is a woman of principle: A poor man must do what he must to get through life, only he mustn't get caught doing it. All sorts of crooked deals contribute to the improvement of the daily menu and the increase of household funds.
Helene rides her motor scooter by Fritz, the “White Mouse,” every morning as he directs traffic through the intersection. Though he yields the right-of-way to her often, they have never spoken and she wants more than his friendly gesture.
Post-war Berlin, 1946: Three small-time, oddball crooks plan the heist of their lives. They want to break into the vault of the German Traffic Credit Union to steal the weekly Reichsbahn payroll. In preparation, they rent the top floor of the building and use it to spy on the bank.
In the desolate eastern states of a newly unified Germany, Anna and Lisa plan a series of bank robberies. They quickly become the most popular gangster duo of German postwar history, hunted by the police, but viewed as present-day female Robin Hoods by those in need.
Florian the miller gives all of his money to the war against Napoleon.
In the summer of 1945, Dresden factory workers send their colleague Kalle (Erwin Geschonneck) hundreds of miles north to pick up supplies. His attempts to travel through the Soviet occupation zone become a hilarious odyssey full of high jinks and misadventures.