When Hamburg ship's mate Klaus Brandt catches a thief one night at the port, his downfall is pre-ordained. For the thief turns out to be a young, attractive woman and the otherwise upright sailor allows her to slip away. Jenny is the star of a local dive bar, with a side-line in smuggling.

Harry Peltzer, who is passionate about his job as a firefighter, and his superior, fire chief Paul Körner, are the best of friends. This changes the day they both meet Nelly, a young, blonde cashier at a vending machine buffet, on whom both men immediately set their eyes. As Harry has a much better chance with Nelly, Paul's friendship with him soon turns into bitter antagonism, if not outright enmity.

The general's daughter spies on her fiancé to achieve information.

Using his marauding robot and other futuristic weapons, power-crazed scientist Professor Ravello carries out various plots to win the hand of Evelyn away from her true love Harry Peel.

In 1885, famous New York Metropolitan Opera singer Maddalena dall' Orto is scheduled to perform at a festival in the German residence of Ilmingen. It soon becomes obvious that she is non other than Magda von Schwartze, who left the town eight years ago against her father's wishes to become a singer.

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.

Nelly's mother is a suffragette and persuades her daughter to join the good cause. Placing a bomb under Lord William's chair love develops between the two.