Teacher Ines and journalist Boris have been happily married for 14 years. But Ines suffers from her childlessness. Then she is confronted with a chapter of her life that has displaced her for many years: In a new student she recognizes her daughter, who she had released after adoption for adoption. Since Boris knows nothing about it, Ines can only trust her best friend Simone. Against her advice, she also seeks in private the proximity to the unsuspecting student. In doing so, she finds herself in a conflict between her responsibility as a teacher and her growing motherly feelings.
Ekke and Karsten are newcomers to the shipyard. Paddy claims to have heard it on Rügen radio. But the two did not fall on their heads, even if they still fear that their accommodation, the "Fritz Heckert" accommodation ship, could be - as it is called - a "working-class monastery". Not only do they find out from Paddy that such worries are unfounded, they experience it for themselves.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was the author of Werther, the romantic novel that was transformed into a play during Goethe's lifetime and which initiated the whole German romantic movement. The book's story tells of young love and suicide. In this East German film, based on a book by Thomas Mann, Lotte (Lilli Palmer) was the woman who served as the model for the heroine in the novel Werther. She comes to Goethe's hometown for a visit, and her experiences there eerily re-create episodes from the book. Goethe comes across as a pompous old bore, and his friends as pandering sycophants, in this very proper communist party-sponsored, anti-heroic movie.
