Alexander Kökert

Before the First World War, Dr. Hans Stockmann had a practice in a small town. His powerhungry brother is the mayor of Bad Trimburg, which has developed into a respectable resort. Dr. Stockmann is called in to become the town’s chief physician. He considers the sanitary conditions to be intolerable and insists on a clean-up. His ambitious brother and all those who, till now, have profited well from the corner cutting, are, of course, against that for financial reasons. The doctor is condemned from all sides and the conflict escalates.

Theodor Fontane's novel about a young girl who as a teenager marries a stiff bureaucrat, has a love affair out of boredom and loneliness and has to suffer the consequences years later should be well known.

Young Percy Averhoff returns to Hamburg after a five-year stay abroad and finds that his parents have already found a bride for him. The young man however has his own ideas, and rebelliously answers a contact ad in which a girl is looking for a young man as a companion for a car trip to Southern Germany. Soon the two of them are on the way. What Percy doesn't know is that the damsel is none other than the girl his parents have chosen for him.