

...

The boy Simplizissimus grows up with simple farmers in the Spessart region. But the idyll is abruptly destroyed by the Thirty Years' War. Simplizissimus is sent to the besieged fortress of Hanau. When the lansquenets there play crude jokes on him, he flees with his friend Herzbruder to the Croats. But even here he does not fare much better....

A married woman runs a successful gallery and falls for a man she met accidentally....

Germanus, a brave gladiator, witnesses the brutal murder of his brother, committed by another fighter. Since then, he will become his worst enemy, with whom he will fight in several fights, each more bitter. One day, Germanus discovers that his sister, also gladiator, maintains a passionate affair with the man who killed the brother of both, without her knowing anything about the crime...

Drifters tells of Karin, a past-her-prime cosmetics saleswoman, with her increasing exasperation with her life and her dreams of leaving it all behind and living in Paris. An unlikely but entertaining plot develops, where anything can happen....

In the late 1970s the German secret service fights against RAF terrorism and searches for constitutional enemies in the public service. Teacher Brasch implicates secret service agent Körner and the government in the suicide of a young teen. As a result Brasch and the exposed Körner are fired....