Elisabeth, wife of a landowner, has kept from her husband for twenty years that their daughter is not his. Rather, she is the result of an affair with a musician she was dating shortly before their marriage. Now this man, by now a famous concert pianist, enters her life again. Elisabeth resists the temptation to sink once again into the arms of her romantic lover. Since she loves her husband, she stays with him and continues to keep her secret...

12-year-old Jakob helps out at his mother's vegetable stand and also carries customers' purchased goods home. One day, an old woman with a long nose comes to the stand and claims that the herbs are bad and were better 50 years ago. Jakob is upset that she holds all the herbs to her nose and crushes them: "Take it away from your long nose!" he shouts and hits her hand. "Don't you like it, my beautiful long nose?" the woman scoffs, "You should have one too, even longer than mine." Finally, she buys some cabbages, which she wants Jakob to carry home for her. Jakob resists but is persuaded by his mother. Other market women whisper whether the old woman is not the evil fairy Kräuterweis.

A Brothers Grimm fairy tale involving siblings finding a gingerbread house in the middle of the forest owned by an evil witch who captures them and by fattening them, intends to have them for her meal.