Inge Hesse-Peters

Ten-year-old Brigitte spends holiday with her father Peter on the Baltic Sea and everything is perfect until they meet strange and beautiful woman on the beach.

The young forester Rudolf is released from a mental hospital after suffering from a mental illness. His widowed mother accompanies the taciturn son to a vicarage where he is supposed to recover. There he meets the pastor's daughter Anna, with whom he immediately falls in love, and the two decide to get married. His mother is critical of the marriage and demands that her son conceal his stay in the "lunatic asylum" from his wife. This secret overshadows the young couple's relationship from the very beginning, and the burden of silence finally makes Rudolf want to take his own life. Only at the last minute is Anna able to save him from this stupidity.

The children of Herbert and Hella, two single train conductors, are going to vacation at Baltic Sea. Unfortunately the parents are to busy to go so the oldest sister is in charge.

Ekke and Karsten are newcomers to the shipyard. Paddy claims to have heard it on Rügen radio. But the two did not fall on their heads, even if they still fear that their accommodation, the "Fritz Heckert" accommodation ship, could be - as it is called - a "working-class monastery". Not only do they find out from Paddy that such worries are unfounded, they experience it for themselves.

This film, based on a story by Theodor Storm, revolves around the young Hauke Haien, who lives near the sea and improves the safety of the inhabitants with his new ideas for building dykes. However, his new methods and his rejection of conservative traditions, such as the "sacrifice" of a living creature when building a dyke, are not welcomed by the local population, which leads to him meeting with great rejection and ultimately even becoming his undoing.