Birgit Raatz

1949. Grafenberg in Brandenburg shortly before the foundation of the GDR. Here lives Michel Hollmann and works in roadmaking. His purpose in life are his wife Lotte and the two children Gerda and Heinz, for whom he is reconstructing a summerhouse into a “nest”. In Grafenberg, his siblings are living as well: His brother Karl, the mayor, and sister-in-law Edith, who works in a textile factory, with their son Jürgen. Edeltraut, his sister, has married the lamp fabricant Berthold Bennert and leads a well-off life. They as well have a son: Harald. Part of the family are further sister Hanna and brother-in-law Hermann, who is a fisherman on one of the local lakes and conducts a tenacious private war against old Stegewald and his presumptive prince-electoral rights. They are living their lives with their large and small conflicts, with different intentions, and yet remain connected always.

Willi Zubrodt is delegated by his department to a parachuting course at the GST. As he is not very disciplined, has no respect for the instructors and does not fit into the collective, the instructors try to show him up and force his expulsion from the course. However, the attempts to prove that he had gaps in his theory and physical condition were a complete failure. Zubrodt manages to turn the tables each time.

Mechanic Hannes Blaschke and his wife Maxi, who works as a bus driver, have just become happy parents of twins. Now they have a serious transportation problem: Their Trabant is far too small for the grown family that furthermore includes two sons and a dog. Thanks to the support of a state secretary and of his brigade, Hannes acquires a Tschaika – a limousine that is normally restricted to representational purposes – for a small price. Whereas Maxi views the state carriage only as a useful means of transportation, Hannes enjoys the unusual pre-emption he is receiving for the spectacular car. Hannes, who normally is just a humble guy, starts to grate his colleagues with his new affectations. Thus, they teach him an effective lesson: They decorate the state carriage with flowers and thus bring Hannes back down to earth in a humorous way.

Jochen Hamann met Martina Schwarz during a stay at a health resort lasting several weeks. The two fell in love and continued their affair after the cure. This is, of course, much to the displeasure of Jochen's wife and Martina's husband. Renate Hamann and Michael Schwarz then form an alliance of convenience, so to speak, in order to separate the two again over time. But this is not as easy as initially thought. In the end, however, Jochen is the one who has to decide who he wants to live with in the future. Either with Renate or with Martina.