S4.E1 ∙ Episode #4.1

Diederich Heßling is scared of everything and everyone. But as he grows up, he comes to realize that he has to offer his services to the powers-that-be if he wants to wield power himself. His life motto now runs: bow to those at the top and tread on those below. In this way, he always succeeds: as a student in a duel-fighting student fraternity and as a businessman in a paper factory. He cajoles the obese district administrative president Von Wulkow and wins his favor. He slanders his financial rivals and hatches a plot with the social democrats in the town council. On his honeymoon with his rich wife Guste, he finally finds a chance to do his beloved Kaiser a favor. And when a memorial to the Kaiser is unveiled in the town where Diederich lives and works, he delivers the address. He stands behind the lectern in the pouring rain, saluting his Kaiser. The crowd is dispersed. Everything is laid in ruins...

The minister of Economy gives a house, a car and job to a man who tried to jump from a building because of his poverty; soon, every poor tries the same strategy.

A young shoemaker is arrested for stealing a small amount of money, and is released after being jailed for 15 years. He wants to have a pass to get a job and start anew, but without a job he doesn't get a pass; and without a pass, he doesn't get a job. He gets into the net of Prussian bureaucracy, and can't see a solution. Until he enters a small Second-Hand Shop, and sees a Prussian Uniform that fits him like a second skin...

The tenants of a rundown building on the outskirts of Tehran with no legal heir face major housing problems to deal with: major repairs and threat of eviction by greedy building manager who wants to own the building.

The story centers on a religiously conservative, married southern woman who receives a message from God instructing her to act as a surrogate mother and carry a child for two married gay men who live in Boston - a Jewish doctor and and African-American dance choreographer. All Hell breaks loose when the African American man comes to her home down south to micro-manage her pregnancy, and he won't leave.

Pic documents the daily lives of a small community of the living deceased who make their home in Los Angeles.