Horst Gentzen

In 1924, Oskar Matzerath is born in the Free City of Danzig. At age three, he falls down a flight of stairs and stops growing. In 1939, World War II breaks out.

In the Danish port city of Belgesund, the caretaker of a private high school has fallen victim to murder. Detective Thomsen takes on the case and finds that behind the clean facade there are abysses. He has five suspects in mind: the teacher Berling, who is having a relationship with a student, the twin brother and sole heir of the murdered man, the murdered man's shady roommate, the primary school teacher Klaus Erikson and his brother Jakob.

Post-war Germany 1945: Two rival gangs of uprooted boys fight each other in the ruins of Berlin, whose business is the black market out of necessity in order to survive. Their respective leaders are Gerhard and Dietrich. A pretty young circus artist named Corona comes to the destroyed city with a traveling circus. She immediately caught the boys' attention. When the latter notice that the circus director is abusing the girl, the two gangs join forces and plot an act of revenge against the tyrant. But with the hustle and bustle caused by this, Corona falls from the trapeze and is seriously injured. When the circus moves on, the boys organize a doctor for the sick artist who has been left behind. Their collectively concern for the blonde beauty makes them forget their enmity. This welds the troops closer together and sets the course for a common, meaningful future.

Dr. Peter Holmes (Carl Moehner), zoologist and veterinarian, relectantly agrees to permit his dog, Wolf, to be used in a launch project commissioned by the International Conference of Science, at Geneva, to study body function and survival in outer space. Holmes had discovered Wolf as a pup in the forest, only to lose him again in a flood, and is fearful of risking the dog's life again.

Overly proper family man Walter Brinkmann is coaxed to a cabaret by free‐spirited friend Bernd. After a spoof of himself, Walter decides to embrace life’s fun side. With his wife away, he returns to the cabaret, where he harmlessly flirts with singer Fee Freiberg. His children and housekeeper secretly shadow him, and when his wife returns, she finds him surprisingly transformed, and then surprisingly grateful.

A teacher is defamed in an obscene way by an over-excited pupil.

Students raised under Nazi ideology witness the disintegration of the Third Reich and the realization of those who indoctrinated them that they were wrong.

A musician seeks a peaceful vacation in a Vogtland village but is soon overwhelmed by requests for a symphonic composition and a pop song for a local dance band, leaving him with no time to relax.