Rainer Delventhal

A look at the lives of 19th-century composers Clara and Robert Schumann.

Sisters Maria and Anna live together. Maria is a most proficient executive secretary, encouraging Anna to finish her studies and start a career. Anna broods, threatens to quit university, takes pills, and keeps a diary. When Maria's relationship with Maurice, the son of her boss, starts to lead to love, Anna takes a selfish and drastic step that plummets Maria into solitude. No longer able to connect with Maurice, Maria does establish a relationship with Miriam, a typist at her office who becomes a surrogate younger sister. But Maria is intrusive as well as helpful. Can this or any relationship work out for this talented woman whose past seems to choke her soul?

As an architect Robert Cortin is self-confident, but his private life is shaky. His wife Vera, a gynecologist, cannot have children. They have tried to get adopt a child for some time. Now Robert learns that his lover Stefanie is pregnant.

Konrad von Seidlitz is a young yuppie lawyer currently celebrating his engagement with Cornelia, daughter of minister of justice Volkerts. As a public relations gag, he hasn't paid his parking fines for two years and now insists on being sentenced to jail for two weeks as punishment. Using his knowledge as a lawyer he makes the best out of his visit in jail still working, still in a splendid mood and not adapting to any rule. Probably a good way to get the desired public attention, but also a good way to make enemies inside the jail-house. One day before Konrad is to be released his booth is searched and two hundred grams of cocaine are found. That's a serious problem even for a brilliant lawyer like Konrad and even if you're innocent

The 40-year-old unemployed Anna Leschek and her 13-year-old daughter Ines rob a bank out of desperation. However, they don't get far with their stolen money. In court, the duo is represented by an alcoholic lawyer who wants to get his life together. For Anna Leschek, on the other hand, it's a matter of bare survival. Slowly the two people get closer to each other...

After the death of his father, the ambitious farmhand Hauke Haien works his way up to become the successor to the old dyke count, whose daughter Elke he marries. He develops plans for the construction of a new dyke to provide better protection against storm surges, but encounters resistance and inertia from the villagers, who superstitiously suspect him of being in league with the devil. As a heavy storm approaches, he chases towards the floods with his white horse...