Elisabeth Wendt

At a mine on the shared edge of France and Germany, an underground explosion leads to the entrapment of a group of French miners. In an effort to save the trapped Frenchmen, German miners Wittkopp and Kasper take it upon themselves to traverse a crumbling war tunnel leading down into the mines. Yet, though the workers harbor no political biases against one another, their callous, less tolerant bosses hope to halt this cross-cultural rescue mission.

A deranged woman artist falls in love with a young sculptor. The impossible love ends tragically.

Jimmy Ward infiltrates a criminal gang, only to reveal at the last moment that he is, in fact, none other than an undercover Sherlock Holmes.

A wrecked car is found on the Reichsautobahn between Hamburg and Bremen. Inside is a murdered woman. It soon becomes clear that the woman is the dancer Grazielle Holm. The investigators are certain: it was murder! But unfortunately there are far too many suspects...

Due to complicity in a robbery raid the young Ursula comes to a detention center, in which the education is hard since she is considered a serious offender. In a joint outbreak, she gains the respect of the other girls.

1939 German film by Karl Ritter.

Irene is unhappy because her lawyer husband Dr. Leuttern never has time for her. Womanizer Mac Norris slyly benefits from her depression and lures her to his apartment. As she struggles to fend him off a shot is fired and Mac collapses.

Consul Petersen and his wife are desperate, because they lost their only child and can’t have another. At the same time, the maid Anna is expecting a child, whose father, Jurgen, works in a sawmill. When both of them lose their jobs, they fear they won’t be able to feed the newborn. Thus, they strike a deal with the Petersens, which works for both couples: Anna and Jurgen will receive a farm from the Petersens, free and clear; and the two will allow the Petersens to adopt the child. Anna and Jurgen marry and are quite happy; but when the child is finally born, Anna doesn’t wish to surrender him and flees with the child into the Wattenmeer.

In the middle of the 19th century, almost one in three women who gave birth died of puerperal fever. The Hungarian doctor Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis also observed these terrible occurrences in his clinic in Vienna. He came to the conclusion that it was primarily the unhygienic conditions in the clinic itself that led to this disease, as his colleagues were constantly shuttling back and forth between the anatomy department and the delivery room. He tries to convince the doctors of the absolute necessity of thorough disinfection by washing their hands with chlorinated lime. He meets with fierce resistance from his colleagues until he himself sets up an exemplary clinic in Budapest.

A moving saga focusing on the women in a family that spans three generations and almost 70 years of German history, from the Wilhelmine period through the end of WWII. This film shows that it takes a combination of hard work, political consciousness and family work in tandem to face the tragedies of war, economic hardship and death.