In order to understand our Europe, one has to understand the Middle Ages, when the dawn of the modern age began. The aim of the four-part series "Ways out of Darkness" is to dispel clichés about this supposedly dark epoch. Not only the desire for adventure, but also the longing for romantic love fulfill knight dreams.

No epoch in Europe was as religious as the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages produced many famous monks. One of them is Edward, from the Abbey of Saint Andrews in Scotland.

Everything we know about the Middle Ages we know from books. They tell us what emperors and kings, what knights, bishops and monks, what citizens and nobles have done and thought. The books tell us little about the farmers. They couldn't read and couldn't write. And those who could write and read were not interested in them. So the peasants remained the silent majority of the Middle Ages. And that's why someone tells about the life of the peasant class who got to know their world: Adam, a juggler, one of the traveling people. As a tightrope walker at peasant and princely weddings, he makes his way. And on market days he earns his money in no time when he pulls lazy teeth and pricks cataracts. “Farm work carries the world”, it was said in the Middle Ages. Over three-quarters of the people were farmers, serfs or day laborers who fed the knights and clergy. "For that I praise the farmer who can feed the whole world."

His passion is exploring and describing the world. Heinrich Schuder is a cosmographer on a secret mission: in Venice, he is supposed to copy nautical charts for the city of Nuremberg, because the council wants to enter the Indian trade together with the Portuguese. But he should also find out what's new on the Rialto. But scientific curiosity is not a safe enterprise. The world of the Middle Ages is in a revolutionary upheaval: Big cities are springing up like mushrooms, long-distance trade is picking up, seafaring is setting out on new continents. You need information and knowledge. Heinrich Schuder explores why the Venetian merchants do not need cash for their business: They invented the current account and invented bills of exchange. It is no coincidence that terms such as current account, agio, disagio, balance, cancellation and manco are Italian.

The film recreates the glamorous millennial history of Rome. In the medieval setting of the Eberbach Monastery, Maximilian Schell tells of the splendor and misery of the Roman Empire and explores the question of why it had to fail in the end. Scientists unravel such secrets of history as that of Hannibal's war elephants and the strategy and tactics of the Roman legions.

In December 1945, an American squadron of airplanes went off course over the Atlantic. The five torpedo bombers disappear without a trace. The Bermuda Triangle has become a death trap for many pilots and seafarers. Thousands of wrecks are said to rest on the ocean floor. What are the causes behind the numerous accidents?