Harry Merkel

This story of the miller Florian, who gave all his money to the war against Napoleon, is loosely based on a true story. After the war, Florian's reimbursement is challenged, and he must also pay taxes on his destroyed mill. He resists the tax collectors and takes off to Vienna, where he intends to defend his rights. On the way, he rescues the Duchess of Guastalla from assault. She also wants to go to Vienna, as His Majesty Franz II is trying to contest an heir in her favor. With cunning, luck, and dagger, Florian fights his way through a slew of nobility and their secret police.

The story of a philanderer behind the wheel of a cab, who gets into a series of hilarious but also adventurous situations, was based on the actual experiences of Berlin cab drivers. It is an entertaining portrayal of how the main protagonist, Eddy, is to be cleverly dissuaded from his dashing bachelor life. Gaby and her grandpa come up with a few ideas. This is necessary, because Eddy may be a proper cab driver, but in his private life he knows no rules when it comes to winning over pretty girls.

Jakob is a poor farmer′s boy. Because of his timidity that even makes him run away from mice, he is often ridiculed by other people. Even the king is ill-disposed towards him. One day he sends Jakob to the devil to rob him of three golden hairs. This is supposed to be Jakob′s certain death. But naïve Jakob gets going and on his way even promises the oppressed subjects of the king to ask the devil for a way out of their misery.

Irka and Raya are best friends, one always knows immediately what the other wants. Irka is young, lively and a girl, Raya is old, blind and a proud mare who had great times as a show horse. The two are inseparable. But when Raya has a foal, Irka turns her attention to the small, helpless and cute animal. Her father had actually promised that she could keep both horses. One day, however, he tells her that she has to part with one of the horses. Irka has to decide for herself: The cute foal or the old mare?

Kasper Mai, an export merchant and comrade with a “clean” record, discovers he is the prince of Hohenlohe-Liebenstein. His royal grandmother designates him as the heir to her estate. A private trip to her reveals that she does not want a NATO airbase built on her land. The GDR and his grandmother thus find a common interest, and a clever lawyer from the East works against other family members looking to settle their debts with the estate money.

Tambari - it's a name of an old boat which children of a small village on a Baltic sea shore got from an old fisherman Luden. But not all the village adults were ready to approve it...

Maja Wegner is in her late thirties and a single mother of a teenage daughter. To give her stale life a new direction, she decides to start all over again in the big city. She sells her house in the countryside, quits her job, and moves with her daughter to Berlin. There, she finds a job as a conductor for the railroad company. Although Maja soon finds new friends in her apartment building, the search for a new life partner does not come off so easily.

Kerstin, daughter of a Stasi officer, escaped East Berlin life but is pulled back when her father secretly manipulates her career. After the Wall falls, she and former West programmer Reginald use forged documents and hidden cash to build new identities and jobs, but old loyalties, secret pasts, and resurging temptations threaten their fresh start.

A morality tale from the time of the Saxon Kingdom. The von Siebenthal volunteer fire department has nothing to do. When their local pub is in a very dilapidated state, but the landlord has no money to renovate it, the fire department tries to help out by setting fire to it themselves, but it doesn't quite work. They look for a new object to set fire to, the supposedly empty prison. But there is only one prisoner, who is heroically rescued by Captain Kaden.

1523. The Protestant theologian Thomas Müntzer is entrusted with the pastorate by the 'Allstedt Council'. On the one hand, he is to open people's minds and hearts to more freedom, and on the other, he is to serve as an ally against the count.

The young Walter Retzlow, drafted into the guard team of a foreign labor factory in the last year of the war, receives the papers of a murdered anti-fascist by chance. He adopts the new identity, which promises him security.

The two computer specialists Frank and Kamminke are not the type of citizens the party likes. Thus they are sent to the landscape where they still find enough stuff to do: They repair the software of a western type factory which is currently not working.

In medieval Germany, poor and witty Till Eulenspiegel fools and cheats citizens, churchmen, and landlords. Although in most cases he uses his wit for personal well-being, he often helps the poor and weak. Eventually, he gains an influential but also dangerous position as royal fool at the court of the emperor.

A story spanning three generations, from 1871 to 1945. When Gustav Wengler, a farmer’s son, returns from the Franco-German war in 1871, he goes to work for a precision mechanics and optical company, where he soon becomes a master craftsman. Wengler loyally promises the owner on his deathbed that his sons and grandsons will also stand by the company.

Unknown assailants threaten the life of British scientist Dr. Ronald Fergusson. Only by chance does the attempt to shoot him in the street fail. Fergusson, who does not believe in police protection, hires private detective Weber for his personal safety. And time and again, the headstrong scientist makes it difficult for his bodyguard to fend off further assassination attempts. Despite being expressly forbidden to do so, he leaves the house. Full of bad suspicions, Weber looks for his client in the morgue, but Vivian, Fergusson's employee, doesn't know the dead man...

Ede falls in love with Unku, a girl from a travelling circus. Love cannot run smoothly however because Unku is a Gypsy. Various adventures take place before love is finally allowed to run its natural course.

Winter 1968. Historian Dr. Dallow is released from prison. He is still trying to cope with and understand why he was put behind bars for 21 months for defamation of the state. His supposed "crime:" for five minutes he accompanied a cabaret chanson on the piano. The film shows what "ordinary socialism" was like, letting the audience feel the threat under which the people in the GDR had to live over many years.

Karoline Gluth is approaching forty, has an 18-year-old son who is studying and is therefore independent. She decides to start a new life and says goodbye to the family inn on the island of Rügen, where she earned a good living as a cook. She buys a little house on the outskirts of Berlin - based on a photo. The reality, however, looks less favourable than the picture. The house is close to collapse and has an illegal occupant, Christian. She evicts him, but he helps her through the jungle of organising tradesmen and materials. In the process, she meets construction brigadier Herbert Kotbuß, clashes with him - and impresses him. Karoline struggles through, the money runs out, she even has to sell her car, and in the end the house is still pretty much a patchwork. But she has realised her ambition for herself - a new independent life begins.

A flamboyant comedy about love, work and money—revealing that the "planned" economy produced some unconventional entrepreneurial methods.

Young Anna Hallbauer, daughter of a blind trumpeter, is suspected of infanticide. In the winter of 1802, children playing in a pond near the village of Sanden found the body of a newborn baby. Heinz Schirmer, a geographer appointed by Baron von Droste, has enough evidence to bring Hallbauer to trial. In the course of the proceedings, in which he believes he is serving absolute, infallible justice, he suddenly finds himself entangled in the crime...

Polizeiruf 110 is a long-running German language detective television series. The first episode was broadcast 27 June 1971 in the German Democratic Republic, and after the dissolution of Fernsehen der DDR the series was picked up by ARD. It was originally created as a counterpart to the West German series Tatort, and quickly became a public favorite.

Der Staatsanwalt hat das Wort was an East German television series.

East German TV miniseries about the young maid Gertrud Habersaat, who marries, moves from Mecklenburg to Poland in the early 1940s, has to come back to Mecklenburg as a refugee during World War II and finally finds her place during the 1950s.