Prussia is on the brink of national bankruptcy. King Frederick William III unexpectedly appoints the tax official Christian Rother as President of the Royal Prussian Maritime Trade.

A West Berlin couple hopes to solve their marital problems while on vacation in Spain. Instead, the tensions between the neglected and misunderstood woman and her annoyed and otherwise unsatisfied husband escalate soon afterwards. She starts an affair with her Persian masseur, he falls in love with a mute toilet attendant, whom he brings back to Berlin and takes in with himself and his two pubescent children, while the woman moves in with her masseur. But even the new constellations quickly get into crisis.

Five more-or-less distinct sections, all featuring "Freak" Orlando, a woman played by the late Magdalena Montezuma, who appears in various guises and deformities throughout.

A decadent Cabaret in Hamburg is near closing down. The owner decides to make a last effort to save the place: produce a male striptease show. Many candidates answer to his newspaper ad. No matter how weird were the rehearsals, the owner would have no regrets.

The story of a short but intense friendship between two very different women in Berlin. Mascha, in her mid-30’s, worked as a television editor for years before dropping out to make two self-financed and unexpectedly successful theatrical films. At the moment, she is taking a break – she’s run out of ideas. Her plight is made worse by her boyfriend Frank’s unsympathetic attitude. He is a head of production, from a working class background, an unscrupulous career man, and won’t tolerate an unsuccessful woman around him. In the midst of this exasperating mess, Mascha meets the ‘’wolf girl’’, Dennis, a young black rebel who works as a cleaner in a theater. The girl fascinates Mascha and she finally breaks her long, loveless relationship with frank so she can spend more time with Dennis. The two women move in together: Mascha because she wants to turn the simple ‘’wild’’ Dennis into a more sedate person, and Dennis because she has secret hopes of finding human warmth and shelter.

A treatise on love and desire tainted by harsh reality of capitalism, in which submission to the laws of lust-as-commerce is played out by five prostitutes and their pimp, who pits them against one another so that they are incapable of standing up to him collectively.

The two brothers Alfred and Hans are very different, one, a mummy's boy, still hopes for the great love at 35, the other enjoys life as a womanizer. When their mother dies, their lives change. Mama's boy Alfred and Don Juan Hans fall in love with the same woman. Their beloved is called Angelika who is in her mid-30s, works in a travel agency and considers herself emancipated. She has not married the father of her now 18-year-old daughter. All parties involved change as a result of the courtship of Angelika. The sad Alfred becomes a radiant lover, the womanizer starts thinking and Angelika herself feels younger and younger.