Monk Medardus, administrator of the relic chamber of a Capuchin monastery, drinks from the elixirs of the devil and is confronted with the dark sides of his soul.

Miss Giehse, an elderly teacher in a boarding school, tries with a lot of good will for her student Robert. The boy seems strangely withdrawn and depressed to her. Robert, whose behavior can be traced back to his parental home, which lacks orderly family relationships, disrupts the lessons with his defiant and rebellious behavior. All her attempts to investigate the causes of this behavior, however, only lead to increasingly serious misunderstandings. In almost hysterical exaggeration, provoked by Robert's tormenting behavior, she finally believes that he is trying to poison her and knocks the boy down during a break. The principal of the boarding school inadvertently witnesses this incident and dismisses Miss Giehse after a heated controversy. The teacher does not overcome the shame of the dismissal and the pain of her own actions and dies on the day she has to leave the boarding school on a trip with the school bus.

17-year-old Traudel flees the orphanage she has to live in, in order to venture to Berlin.

Berlin in 1878: Corinna Schmidt, who was brought up in a petit-bourgeois, academic family, is romantically interested in Leopold Treibel, the son of the lordly councillor of commerce Jenny Treibel – although Corinna is also deeply in love with her cousin Marcel. Leopold is also falling for cute Corinna, and Jenny Treibel tries to prevent their friendship by all means, but changes her opinion when their secret engagement becomes public. To avoid a scandal, she urges them to marry quickly. But Corinna soon withdraws from this complicated situation and again turns to her cousin, who is banished from the country for his social democratic beliefs.

The story of Johann Friedrich Böttger, an apothecary’s apprentice and alchemist’s assistant. Fleeing from the Prussian King, he goes to Saxony, where King Frederick August the Strong takes him to a fortress and demands that he create gold. Böttger is equipped with everything he would need for the task, but he has known for a while that actual gold production is a myth and instead experiments with porcelain—white porcelain, as the Chinese are said to possess. In 1709, he finally succeeds in surprising the King with the "white gold," the first white porcelain made in Europe, he hopes for freedom.

A chemist and his assistant make a groundbreaking discovery. They manage to make butter directly from pasture grass without having to deal with either the cow or the use of dairy products. An industrialist attempts to seize the invention.