The Sinking of Emma

A group of children are trying to organize a pioneers detachment.

1934, Germany. Jan is a 13 year old boy, who is raised without a mother. His father, a communist, is accused of a political murder, and predicted to be shot by the police when he was on the run. Jan lives with his aunt and finds a friend, Max, who wants to help him to find out what really with his father happened. During a conspirative gathering Max is shot by SA (Nazi paramilitary) and Jan succeed to escape in a barge. Erika, the daughter of the captain of the barge, and a boatman hide him. They try to help Jan to escape from police and find his father, who really survived.

Little Sabine has spent her childhood in an orphanage after her parents died in a car accident. When one of the women in charge at the orphanage, Edith, leaves to have a baby, Sabine runs away, because Edith was the only adult there she could trust. She then wanders through the city to find someone to take her in. She meets a lot of people on her journey, but she seems out of place everywhere she goes until, at last, she realizes that there is a special place where she belongs.

Elizabeth is an open-minded young person - curious and unbiased. She is sixteen, goes to secondary school and things are really going well, not least because her father, a Party member, occupies a privileged position. But then the father suddenly dies. Elizabeth feels lonely and abandoned, all the more so because her brother has long since severed all ties with his father.

Following a training course, the 28-year-old Helga Baumann, a single mother of two children, meets up with her husband Fred again. They had separated a while ago because their ideas of marriage were completely disparate: The conservative Fred advocated the woman′s role of wife and mother, while Helga dreamt about an emancipated partnership between two employed persons. Now, her sister has brought them back together. At first sight, Fred seems to have changed and, once again, Helga cannot resist his advances. But when she meets with difficulties during a fair in Tashkent, Fred yet again proves to be a petty bourgeois by assuring her that they would get along perfectly without her working.

Ede falls in love with Unku, a girl from a travelling circus. Love cannot run smoothly however because Unku is a Gypsy. Various adventures take place before love is finally allowed to run its natural course.

Wolf Brandin is in his mid-twenties and lives with his wife and child in East Berlin at the end of the 1950s. In West Berlin, the student of electrical engineering is recruited by the American secret service CIA. But Brandin immediately notifies the State Security of the German Democratic Republic and from then on lives a dangerous life as a double agent. When Brandin reaches the breaking point, his marriage starts to unravel because Brandin is not allowed to tell his family about his double life.

London in 1856. Karl Marx is living in exile in the British capital. One day, "Mohr", as Marx is called by his friends, meets the 13-year old worker′s son Joe. The boy works every day for twelve hours in a spinning mill and even has to work night shifts although that violates current rules. Marx tries to end the illegal activities of the spinning mill owner and one night shows up at the mill together with an inspector. But his foray is undermined by a robbery by the rebellious raven gang that is led by Joe′s brother Billy. The spinning mill owner of course takes this chance to blame his young workers for the theft. But Marx is not let astray and does not stop to fight against child labour. Furthermore, he tries to get the members of the raven gang back on the straight and narrow – with success.

18-year old Georg and 13-year old Barbara have been playing together as children. Play becomes love later, which leads to a catastrophe , as their parents are hostile leading to file a report to the court, as Barbara is still under age.