Rainer Geis

Kurt Gerber is attending his final class and gets into trouble with the math professor, a frustrated self-assured petty bourgeois sadist. The duel ends in catastrophe.

As Germany's fortunes in the latter part of World War II wane, several young boys, in their enthusiasm to do something "for the fatherland", volunteer to fight with the German army in the East. Horrified at the news that their children left for the Russian front, the boys' mothers begin a desperate effort to get their sons back.

An American heiress in Europe falls in love with a German prince, but he is required to marry someone else for reasons of state convenience.

In a hospital, the Protestant pastor Heger and the Catholic chaplain von Imhoff are responsible for pastoral care. Cornelie, a senior doctor, has lost her faith in God after the death of her daughter in the war. One day, Cornelie's former lover and father of her deceased daughter, the actor Gorgas, turns up to visit his friend von Imhoff. During these days, Gorgas invites Heger's ten-year-old daughter to visit him at the fairground, where she has a fatal accident on the swing boat. Hegers seems to be broken by this stroke of fate, but finds support in von Imhoff, who even gives him the strength to stop Gorgas from committing suicide. Cornelie regains her faith and stays with Heger.

An old donkey resolves to break away from the unbearable hardships of working for a fat miller. By and by, he recruits three more unsatisfied animals and convinces them to accompany him on his way to Bremen where they want to become musicians.