Hugo Kalthoff

Dr. Blum, a Jewish manufacturer, is falsely accused of a murder. Even when the real killer’s identity becomes evident, the state prosecutor refuses to accept Blum’s innocence.

Martin′s and his girlfriend′s Kathrin′s childhood comes to an abrupt end in 1920, when their Mecklenburg village is drawn into the events surrounding the Kapp putsch. By accident, Martin discovers a charge of weapons that land owner von Bröder had put away for the reactionary forces, and gives them to the workers in the city. When the village starts to organize a strike against the putsch, soldiers arrive at the village to hold down the residents of the village.

Behnke, un mécanicien, veut rejoindre le parti nazi pour assurer une bonne vie. Toutefois, après ses voisins juifs ont été enlevés, il change son point de vue. Essayer de rester « un homme non-politique », il se retire de la réalité et devient un ouvrier nazi.

This story of the miller Florian, who gave all his money to the war against Napoleon, is loosely based on a true story. After the war, Florian's reimbursement is challenged, and he must also pay taxes on his destroyed mill. He resists the tax collectors and takes off to Vienna, where he intends to defend his rights. On the way, he rescues the Duchess of Guastalla from assault. She also wants to go to Vienna, as His Majesty Franz II is trying to contest an heir in her favor. With cunning, luck, and dagger, Florian fights his way through a slew of nobility and their secret police.

Long before he played the corpulent Goldfinger, German actor Gert Froebe was a scarecrow-skinny comedian. In Berliner Ballade, Froebe makes his screen debut as Otto, a feckless Everyman who tries to adjust to the postwar travails of his defeated nation. Stymied by black-market profiteers and government bureaucrats, Otto begins fantasizing about a happier life at the end of that ever-elusive rainbow. Director R. A. Stemmle doesn't have to strive for pathos: he merely places his gangly star amidst the ruins of a bombed-out Berlin, and the point is made for him. Filmed in 1948, Berliner Ballade was later released in the U.S. as The Berliner.