Charity (1/6)

Charity (1/6)

With her last strength, poor orphan Ida Lenze drags herself to the Berlin Charité with acute appendicitis, where young staff doctor Emil Behring saves her life with an emergency operation. He's one of the few surgeons who can do the tricky new procedure. Behring applies to work for famed institute director Robert Koch. The eyes of the world are on Koch, who is working on a remedy for tuberculosis, the most deadly disease at the time. However, the job goes to Behring's rival Paul Ehrlich, to whom Koch is like a father. Koch needs Ehrlich more than ever right now because he's at a dead end in his research, and in his marriage as well. When vivacious debutante actress Hedwig Freiberg comes on to the shy scientist, he falls head over heels in love with her. A prominent patient is keeping not only the Charité on edge, but the whole German Empire: Crown Prince Friedrich may have cancer of the larynx. Rudolf Virchow, the Charité's world-famous pathologist, examines him and is relieved: He can find no sign of cancer. Ida is well again, thanks in large part to the care of med student Georg Tischendorf - but she lost her job as a nanny. To pay for her treatment in the Charité, she has to go to work as nursing assistant.

The Charité
Between breakthroughs in medical research and enormous social upheavals in 1888, the Charité is well on its way to becoming the most famous hospital in the world. It is a city within the city, following its own laws and rules. At the beginning of the Wilhelmine Period, up to 4,000 patients are treated annually. Along with the expected injuries caused by the booming Industrialization, patients are suffering from infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, diphtheria, typhoid and cholera, as well as from sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis. In addition, there are over 1000 students, taught at the Berlin University, who are being trained in this famous hospital by the eventual Nobel Prize winners and most prestigious doctors of the time: Rudolf Virchow, the founder of the modern health care systems, Robert Koch, the discoverer of the tuberculosis virus, Emil von Behring, whose work contributed greatly to the healing of diphtheria and Paul Ehrlich, who developed the first drug against syphilis.

Sönke Wortmann - The Director
Director Sönke Wortmann is one of the big names in contemporary German cinema. His epic melodrama "The Miracle of Bern" (2003) was a world-wide success and his 2006 Football World Cup documentary, "Germany: A Summer's Fairytale", ranks among the country's most successful documentaries. He has also directed the opulent historical drama "The Pope" (2009) as well as "Maybe, Maybe Not" (1994), the most successful German film of the 1990s.