Stella Goldschlag grows up in Berlin during the Nazi regime. She dreams of a career as a jazz singer, but is forced to go into hiding with her parents in 1944, and her life turns into an hopeless tragedy.

A group of friends are in a holiday home by the Baltic Sea where emotions run high as the parched forest around them catches fire.

Undine works as a historian lecturing on Berlin's urban development. But when the man she loves leaves her, the ancient myth catches up with her. Undine has to kill the man who betrays her and return to the water.

Ambitious Jana is confronted with the unscrupulous machinations of the world of finance. Her working life is determined by egotism, the pressure to succeed and machismo. She soon has to decide how far she is prepared to go for her career.

German artist Kurt Barnert has escaped East Germany and now lives in West Germany, but is tormented by his childhood under the Nazis and the GDR-regime.