Joseph Offenbach

Anna is a factory worker in East Germany, but her five-year-old son Jochen lives with his grandparents in the West. Anna wants him to live with her, so she abducts him. Along the way she meets Carl, who helps her cross the border, and they fall in love.

A poor Hungarian artist falls in love with a wealthy mysterious Parisian girl.

1958: during the Russian campaign, a military priest is called upon to assist Private Baranowski, who has been sentenced to death for desertion, on his last night. It is also the last night before the departure for Stalingrad, which the soldiers know means certain death. The priest leaves his room to a captain so that he can meet his fiancée one last time. He himself remains in Baranowski's cell and struggles with his conscience and his emotion - even more so when he learns that the young doomed man committed desertion out of love. But the execution is carried out, and a member of the firing squad finds only cynical words for the soldier's fate.

A disfigured killer with glazed-over white eyes is doing the dirty work so that an insurance agent-doctor can get the victims' insurance money.

Karl Geschwandtner, a porter in a large hotel, has only one wish: one day, he'd like to be the lord and master, as the saying goes: to be the porter and 'ruler' in the hotel. And luck helps him to temporarily fulfill his dream. But Karl doesn't just take over running the hotel, he feels the need to stick his nose in the life of his hotel guests, too. There are couples, who don't want to be put together or apart. When a valuable jewel goes missing, he plays detective and only succeeds in helping the thief to rob the hotel guests at his leisure. Pretty soon, chaos reigns at the hotel; there's massive confusion. Even the newspaper seller, Wally, whom Karl secretly loves, is slowly starting to mistrust him. When the director of "Hotel Europa" finally returns, he throws Karl out, who thereupon simply rents a room as a guest.

The romantic conflicts of a runaway young woman who works as a model and is courted by two journalists...

A young shoemaker is arrested for stealing a small amount of money, and is jailed for fifteen years. Upon his release, he wants to get a permit to get a job and start anew, but finds that without a job he can't get a permit, and without a permit he can't get a job. Ensnared in the absurd net of Prussian bureaucracy, he can't see any way out. That is, until he enters a thrift shop and spots a Prussian officer's uniform that fits him like a second skin...

A true story based on the popular novel by the Baroness Von Trapp of Austria. The film was made in 1956, some years before the other film based on the Trapp Family's life was released - a little movie named "The Sound of Music".