Philipp Melanchthon decisively shaped the history of the Reformation in Germany and renewed German education. In the shadow of his fatherly friend Martin Luther, he tirelessly tried to reconcile Reformation and humanism, Protestantism and Catholicism.

The supremely world-weary Lemmy Caution, last seen in Godard's "Alphaville" (France/1965), has several strange encounters while trying to make his way from the former East Germany to "the west."