Country Dr. Robert Koch is desperate: a tuberculosis epidemic is decimating the children in his district and no one is able to do anything about it. Every fourth child is already sick and the parents must helplessly watch as their young ones die. Now Koch is undertaking to find the cause of the...
Set during the rise of the Nazi regime, Elisabeth Maurer and Hans Wieland enjoy successful careers as actors in Berlin. Confident in her career, Elisabeth, who is Jewish, ignores the advice of a colleague to leave Germany in the face of increasing anti-Semitism. Believing that he can protect her if...
A biographical film of Otto von Bismarck, the Prime Minister of Prussia, and how he and his policies - including aggressive war - helped to unite Germany.
Old John Carstens sells his marine‐equipment firm to Lafrenz, unaware it’s now a fuel‐smuggling front. Living above the showroom with daughter Hanna and son Jochen, he resists Lafrenz’s pressure. When Hanna falls for bargeman Oschi Rasmus, Lafrenz demands John either give up Hanna or settle...
After her husband dies, a German woman who gave up her infant for adoption to emigrate to America returns to Germany, discovering that her child is being raised by a married orchestra conductor.
This film is a fascinating showcase for Emil Janning's theatrical play. He's a gentle school teacher who believes in his boys and is easily fooled about all things, while the other town officials want him dismissed. Curiously it's very hard to see what the film is exactly aiming for. Disaster...
Paris, 1830: Jean-Gaspard Debureau performs on the stage and delights his audience with song, wit and charm. He is, however, very unpopular with King Charles X, who is the target of much of Debureau's scornful jests. That would be a somewhat tolerable situation if it weren't for the fact that...
In the middle of the 19th century, almost one in three women who gave birth died of puerperal fever. The Hungarian doctor Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis also observed these terrible occurrences in his clinic in Vienna. He came to the conclusion that it was primarily the unhygienic conditions in the...
French teacher Annette Müller has two ardent admirers who are constantly urging her to marry: diplomat Klaus and engineer Theo. But she can't make up her mind. Then a third one joins them, the pianist Hans. Sometimes she dreams of Klaus, sometimes of Theo. And although she is angry that Hans has...
The man who broke the jug, the judge, is trying a case who determine who broke the jug. Long before the evidence becomes conclusive against the suspects, it becomes apparent that the blustering and bullying - and naive - village judge is the guilty one.
Post-war Germany 1945: Two rival gangs of uprooted boys fight each other in the ruins of Berlin, whose business is the black market out of necessity in order to survive. Their respective leaders are Gerhard and Dietrich. A pretty young circus artist named Corona comes to the destroyed city with a...
The film centres around the young woman Erika, desperately seeking for love and escape from the depression of the times, drifting, and in the end becoming involved with a circle of rich people who sell goods for sexual favours.
After drinking too much alcohol, King Michael XXXVII promptly forgets his own wedding date! To avoid a scandal, his police minister asks the writer Peter Petroni, who looks deceptively like the king, to stand in for the alcoholic Michael at the ceremony. The only trouble is that the game quickly...
