Acting
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A group of talented young people are dismissed from an ice dancing troupe as a result of the intrigues of Alida, the wife of impresario Gordon. Outraged, the young people leave Gordon's troupe and, having organized their own group, soon achieve success with audiences. Gordon, deprived of his talented performers, suffers a collapse and goes bankrupt.
Vienna is celebrating New Year’s Eve 1913/14. It is the year, which will see the outbreak of the First World War. In Hotel Sacher, the mood is excellent; and although the political atmosphere is charged, there’s an undercurrent of hate and intolerance in the air. It is with this background that Nadja, a Russian spy, meets the Austrian civil servant Stefan. He loves her, but comes under suspicion of being an agent because of this love.
Berlin, the end of the 19th Century: The pretty sisters Gabriele and Ulrike Wilkens have both completed their ballet training with honors. But only Gabriele is really dedicated to the art; Ulrike, on the other hand, is more the domestic type. She dreams of having a husband and children. One day, both of them get to know the aspiring composer Andreas Holk. Holk falls madly in love with Gabriele without suspecting, that Ulrike is in love with him! He arranges a prestigious engagement for the sisters at the Berlin Opera, which only Gabriele accepts. Ulrike prefers her modest life. When Count Alversheim courts Gabriele with unbridled energy, a disappointed Holk turns to Ulrike. When Gabriele finally comes to her senses, it is too late: she’s lost Holk to her sister.
The greengrocer Ferdinand Strubel wants his daughter Marianne to marry the son of the brewery owner Baron von Schnackenberg. Since Strubel is an impossibly cheap bastard, the marriage is to take place on 20 May, which, coincidentally, is the same day the city is having a grand festival for him to celebrate his company's being in business for 100 years. Marianne, however, has fallen in love with Leopold, a gym teacher; and when he reads an article in the newspaper about the upcoming arrival of Haley's Comet on 19 May, he comes up with an idea how he can prevent the wedding from taking place: He tells Strubel that the world is going to come to an end when the comet shows up, so that Strubel will see the errors of his way, cancel the arranged wedding and will become a better person for it. (Sucker!).
A showgirl aspiring to greater things endeavours to sort out her financial and romantic problems.
Berlin, 1890: Werner Ludtke is only nine years old, but this son of a shoemaker is already in love with his playmate, Felicitas von Graefe. At first, her father just laughs about this infatuation; but as the children start to grow up, the class-conscious gentlemen doesn’t find this crush all too swell. Werner’s mother has a solution: her son must join the Army and go far away from Felicitas.
The young emperor Joseph II of Austria and Hungary is not interested in romance and marriage, and every time his mother makes arrangements for him to meet eligible young ladies, he escapes under some pretense. This time he is off on a 'tour of inspection' with his trusted friend von Kleber. Things become complicated when von Kleber, pretending to be the emperor so as to protect the real Joseph from discovery, falls in love with Christine, the landlady of their lodgings. And when Christine later writes to the emperor, her letter is read by the mother of the real emperor, as keen as ever to see him getting married, and so the lady is invited to the imperial court.
