Observing staunch moral attitudes, professor Traugott Nägler, his wife Marianne, and their swarm of children life a happy and idyllic life in a small town. But when their oldest daughter Atlanta inherits a house in Montevideo that belonged to the deceased sister of the professor, the family′s life is about to change dramatically.

Baron Holberg, who looks back with pride on a long family tradition as hotel thieves, is horrified when his daughter Doris falls in love with the lawyer Robert Hammond, of all people, rather than choosing the art thief Sammy, as he would wish. Under the pretext that they are being pursued by the police, he lures his daughter away from the lawyer, but when he confesses the deception to her, Doris immediately sets off for Hammond's country estate near London. However, Hammond's father is not too fond of the connection either...

Bernhard works as a warehouse clerk in Munich. After being sentenced to probation for a physical altercation with a right-wing extremist, he could no longer continue his engineering studies. Bernhard meets Johanna. She comes from a well-to-do family; her father is a real-estate developer and her brother is in the diplomatic service. Bernhard wants to share his roots with her, so the two go to Prague, where he lived until the end of the war. But her father disapproves of the trip to the Eastern bloc. When Bernhard finds out that he owes his chance to develop new technology, which led to his career advancement, to his girlfriend’s father, he is upset …

a silent movie by Robert Wiene