Early film adaptation of Gottfried Keller's well-known novella as a silent film. The plot revolves around a journeyman tailor who is thrown out by his master and, without his intervention, is forced into a lying role in which he takes on the role of a wealthy person.

Vienna in the year 2032: »Friendly greenish settlements line the city«, skyscrapers are growing in the city center, »but old Steffl is still there and takes on all the high-rise buildings«. In the archives of the City of Vienna, the old archivist tells his grandson how old Vienna tried to oppose the new era a hundred years ago. "Old Vienna" is a conservative, anti-progressive place here, from which social democracy has made a "red island in the sea of capitalism".

One night Toni forces Rose to reveal where in his house Bergern keeps his money. As Toni is robbing the house, the banker unexpectedly returns and is shot dead by Toni. Rose and Toni escape to the Austrian "Semmering" to avoid capture as well as starting a new life.

Three men fall in love with a woman from a window photograph. When they find her living as a recluse in an isolated Hungarian mansion, they decide against a visit because she wouldn't live up to their idealized images of her.

Claire, the wife of a bank teller, has a liason with a mysterious stranger while her husband is away.