When the successful trumpeter Jonny has nearly all his concert earnings seized by tax collector Weber, he has had enough: he packs up his trumpet and travels to the Black Forest. Along the way, he encounters the musical vagabonds Tünnes and Nachtigall; he initially gives them a lift, but after his car is also confiscated by the police, he walks with them to the village of Todtmoos. There, he checks into a guesthouse and promptly falls in love with the innkeeper's daughter, Rosl.

The popular trapeze artist Cora is married to the respected doctor Frank Crippen. After a party at the Crippens' house, Cora suddenly disappears. Apparently, she traveled to Brazil alone overnight. However, a friend of the couple is skeptical and calls the police. While excavating the garden, Inspector Düwell makes a gruesome discovery: body parts. Meanwhile, the prime suspect, Dr. Crippen, has already gone into hiding...

Florestan Mississippi, a public prosecutor by profession, visits a lady named Anastasia and, while drinking coffee with her, convicts her of poisoning her husband. At the same time, he asks for her hand in marriage, as he too has killed his wife with poison; the marriage is to be the "atonement" of the two poisoners. The four allegorical personifications in this comedy are, in addition to the loveless, absolute justice in the form of the prosecutor Mississippi, perfect equality, represented by the world revolutionary Saint-Claude, Christian love, embodied in the down-and-out, alcoholic tropical doctor Count Uebelohe-Zabernsee, and finally the "Frau Welt" of the old mystery play – Anastasia, who falls for everyone and betrays everyone, loves nothing but the moment, and dies with an invoked untruth on her lips.

When a wife reads a love letter addressed to her husband, written by an unknown female, all hell breaks lose.

German chancellor Otto von Bismarck promises the dying emperor Wilhelm I. to be loyal to his grandson. But the gap between young Kaiser Wilhelm II. and old Bismarck is rapidly widening. It soon appears that an era is coming to an end.

1941 film by Karl Ritter

The evil Dr. Mabuse develops a death ray with which he threatens the world.

Winter 1942: Like thousands of other German soldiers, Asch and Vierbein have ended up at the Eastern front. Although Vierbein finds a new friend in Kowalski, the squadron commander captain Witterer, a true army veteran, gives them a really hard time. Witterer’s pointless orders reflect the bad habits of many former superiors. And again, Vierbein has to bear the brunt.

When the Dutch resistance brings in Carla Van Oven to spy on the Nazis, Col. Pieter Deventer initially suspects she could be a double agent. Van Oven eventually convinces Deventer of her character, and when she is sent into occupied territory, she joins up with a rebel leader known as "The Scarf". As the resistance endures severe losses and their missions fail, Deventer starts to wonder whose side Van Oven is fighting on.

Cute Sophie is an amoral French girl living in a sumptuous Venetian palazzo. She is the kept woman of a very rich but undesirable fellow named Eric von Bergen, an ex-nazi turned forger.

Dr. Schön picks up a flower girl, gives her a make-over and marries her off to a rich friend with a weak heart. After the predictable fatality the girl marries an artist who is then driven to suicide. Then Dr. Schön succumbs to her charm himself with no better luck. After a few further affairs the girls ends up penniless in London and is murdered by Jack the Ripper. Based on the same Wedekind plays that served as a basis for Pandora's Box, this looks like a seminal film, midway between Pabst and Fassbinder.