Ambitious Jana is confronted with the unscrupulous machinations of the world of finance. Her working life is determined by egotism, the pressure to succeed and machismo. She soon has to decide how far she is prepared to go for her career.

German artist Kurt Barnert has escaped East Germany and now lives in West Germany, but is tormented by his childhood under the Nazis and the DDR-regime.

In the aftermath of WWI, a young German who grieves the death of her fiancé in France meets a mysterious Frenchman who visits the fiancé's grave to lay flowers.

Through a hidden path a lone rider reaches a little town high up in the Alps. Nobody knows where the stranger comes from, nor what he wants there. But everyone knows that they don't want him to stay.

A man attempting to escape occupied France falls in love with the wife of a dead author whose identity he has assumed.

Undine works as a historian lecturing on Berlin's urban development. But when the man she loves leaves her, the ancient myth catches up with her. Undine has to kill the man who betrays her and return to the water.