This is the first of five parts of Klaus Wyborny's "Lieder der Erde" / "Song of the Earth" cycle of films, whose theme is "the emergence of modern European civilization."

The young toolmaker Jochen fights with his colleagues to a performance bonus. He gets to know the girl Marion. For both, it is love at first sight.

The first part of this series by Norman McLaren deals only with tempo. It starts by showing the disc travelling in one move (1/24 of a second) from A to B, and progressively demonstrates slower and slower tempos.

At the end of the 19th century a Catholic pastor and religious teacher confiscated the book Lausbubengeschichten from Ludwig Thoma in his class from one of his students.

Granny Jantzen lives with her three granddaughters Dick, Dalli and Angela on the small pony farm Immenhof in Northern Germany. Since the breeding of ponies isn′t profitable anymore, Granny Jantzen is struggling to keep the family property. During the summer break , young Ethelbert is spending his holiday with his cousins at Immenhof. While Angela has fallen in love with the wealthy land owner Jochen von Roth, Dick and Dalli have to put up with bigheaded urbanite Ethelbert.

Inspector Juve is tasked to investigate and capture an infamous criminal Fantomas.