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 tuberculosis --- something he has already been working on for years --- which has been causing this plague of illness. His work is made more difficult by envy; for example, that of his teacher, who was wounded defending his honor. But his greatest obstacle is the famous Berliner scientist and Reichstag deputy, Privy Councilor Rudolf Virchow: He is extraordinarily skeptical of Koch's theory, that the cause for tuberculosis is a bacteria.

During a journey of the "Ceder", the Captain, von Moltmann, disappears. It looks like an accident, but it could also have been murder. Attorney Dr. Burger and superintendent Störensen discover quickly that two of the crewmen hated the Captain: Chief officer Rohlfs suspects an affair between his fianceé Gerda and von Moltmann. Chief engineer Sparkuhl thinks the Captain has seduced his niece, who later committed suicide. The court decides that the Captain has gone overboard without anyone else's "help", but the rumors don't come to an end.

During the Napoleonic occupation of the German states in 1812, a tailor by the name of Anton Wibbel is sentenced to sit in jail for insulting the Emperor. The tailor manages to get out of this by paying off a friend to go to prison in his place. But then, the "phony" prisoner suddenly dies in his cell and everyone now thinks Wibbel is dead.