The first season was directed by Sönke Wortmann, and was written by Grimme-Preis winner Dorothee Schön and Sabine Thor-Wiedemann.
The series premiered on 21 March 2017 on the German channel Das Erste, and was distributed in the USA and UK on Netflix between April 2018 and June 2022.
In addition, there are many medical students, taught at the Berlin University, who are being trained in this famous hospital by the future 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 bacillus, Emil von Behring, whose work contributed greatly to the healing of diphtheria, and Paul Ehrlich, who developed the first drug against syphilis.
Ida suffers under the strict thumb of Deaconess Matron Martha, while making friends with shy young nurse Therese.
Behring tells Ida that women can study medicine in Switzerland but not in the German Reich, and gives her books to read.
Liberal reformers in the Reich like Virchow hope for a political thaw now that Kaiser Friedrich III has ascended the throne.
The treatment by the surgeons of the Charité cannot save him and he dies after a reign of a mere 99 days, leaving his nationalist son as the next Kaiser, Wilhelm II.
When the child's pulse starts to fade and the situation becomes critical, there is only one surgeon left at the clinic who can help: Emil Behring.
Hagenbeck's "Peoples of the World Show" at the Berlin Zoo brings an unusual patient to the Charité: an Indian woman has come down with variola (smallpox), a disease which has been wiped out in Germany thanks to inoculation.
Virchow, the unchallenged star at the Charité again after his triumph over his colleague Koch, is fascinated by anthropology and accepts the patient as an object of demonstration.
Nursing assistant Stine keeps her distance, but she begins to feel affection for the Indian woman when she cares for her as she is dying.
Ida suspects that the brilliant but sensitive man needs a strong woman at his side – and thinks she is willing to give up on her dream of studying medicine for his sake.
The hospital is still considered a focal point for medicine, but the staff is divided since some members do not support the regime while others are staunch followers of the government.
He seems to become more and more critical of the Nazi regime as World War II progresses, which makes him clash with several of his colleagues.
Unlike Sauerbruch, De Crinis is also an avid proponent of the country's euthanasia programmes, some of which are carried out at the Charité.
Her professor is Ferdinand Sauerbruch, a surgeon who grew to fame at the Berlin Charité for inventing a surgical technique that prevents amputation of a patient's damaged thigh.
He gets a job as a clinic clerk and makes friends with Martin, an orderly and former soldier with a leg prothesis who quickly realizes that Otto's easygoing personality is just an act to hide his severe PTSD.
Magda Goebbels is constantly drunk, makes sarcastic remarks about life and admits to Anni that her marriage has become nothing more than a façade.
Christel, a nurse and avid Nazi supporter, finds a leaflet of the White Rose that belongs to the patient.
Käthe, a children's nurse, suspects the true reasons for her hospitalization, but Artur and Anni assert that she fell from her changing table.
In early 1945, Sauerbruch and his staff have to operate on wounded soldiers and civilians with only a very limited amount of medicine, water and electricity available.
He notices that an admitted boy with severe burn wounds who recently lost his mother and sister in a concentration camp is Jewish, but does not give him away.
Later, the boy's father gives him a Yellow badge which will protect Artur from the approaching Red Army as they will think he is Jewish.
Martin meets some underaged Volkssturm soldiers who are determined to defend the heavily damaged city from the incoming Soviets.