Ludwig Ganghofer

For Count Egge, there is only one meaningful way of life: living in the magnificent natural surroundings of his mountains. Only hunting matters to him; he even neglects his own children for its sake. Inevitably, this leads to conflicts that result in tragic alienation within the family. These conflicts continue even after the youngest son, Willy, is found dead and Count Tassilo, the eldest, breaks with his father, whose stubbornness he can no longer bear.

The huntsman of a Bavarian monastery falls in love with a beautiful girl and convinces the provost to make his steward delay her brother's feudal due arrears.

The young Count Ettingen leads a dissolute life in Munich with the demanding Baroness Prankha at his side. To finance his life, he has his uncle cut down the forests in his estate without caring about the consequences. When he catches his girlfriend having an affair, however, he retreats to the mountains. From the young alpine dairymaid Lore he learns about another side of life and wants to stop the overexploitation of the forest. But the baroness still wants his money.

Pauli is a professional wood carver of religious figures, but can't get the approval of his girlfriend's strict father.

Hans, a young journeyman violin maker, meets and falls in love with Christel. But he has to go to Milan for a year. Before he leaves, the two get engaged. Christel's mother, who is against the union, intercepts Hans' letters from Italy.

Poldi Sonnleitner had actually wanted to trade the local mountains for the vastness of the open sea. That’s why he had become a sailor. But during a visit home, everything suddenly changes for him, because all he wants is to stay with his girlfriend Dorle, the grocer’s daughter. When he learns that she has long been promised to the village blacksmith Domini—once Poldi’s best friend—he sets out on a life-threatening mountain trek in a fit of rage. As fate would have it, only his friend Domini can save him.

In the first light of day, one can see a mountain farm close to the forest. Nothing stirs far and wide. Suddenly, a figure comes out of the forest, running quickly to the farm. There's a quick grab and the hunting rifle is hidden in the gutter. There's a jump to the window sill: Obermeier Martl creeps like a cat into his room. No one's seen him. At the same time, the doorbell rings at Doctor Rauch's place. The hunter's mate Hias is standing outside. "Doctor, you have to bandage me: I've been shot!" By whom, he doesn't know.

When a hunter returns home after two years, he finds nothing is like it used to be, as his cruel rival has stolen his bride.

The daughter of a poor mountain farmer becomes pregnant by a young nobleman. Because he does not want to marry her, she commits suicide. Her brother Ferdl then wants to confront the count. A brawl ensues. Ferdl has to flee into the mountains, where he falls into a ravine and is presumed dead.

The count Egge is barely a visitor in his Alpine family castle Hubertus, being preoccupied with hunting. He's furious when his young adult sons miss an annual municipal hunting concession auction, being both in love with local commoner girls, deemed undesirable although their mother was an actress herself, as is their sister's lover, painter Forbeck. So comital heir Tassilo marries in secret, spare heir Willy courts 'discretely'. Then tragedy strikes, with further consequences for the whole comital family.

A farmer shelters his brother, a wood carver, from the police who want him for the murder of a local official. In a subplot, a mountain girl finds her soulmate in a young forester.

High up in the mountains, a peasant family drags themselves through the towering granite blocks with all their possessions to make a new home for themselves. The mountains, however, have no interest in seeing them make a home up there: for months, huge boulders have been crashing down around them; trees have been falling on the walls of their new home and collapsing it ... and more than one time.

In order to stop the annual flooding, a dam is to be built in the mountain valley; a life-threatening undertaking for the inhabitants.

Berchtesgaden in the 15th century: A power struggle between mountain peasants who have been raising milk cows on common land and a village bailiff trying to gain power driving them off the land. Both have a ducal documents that states the opposite.

Miniseries based on a 1914 historical novel by the German writer Ludwig Ganghofer - The War of the Oxen - set against the backdrop of the War of the Oxen in the 1420s.