Gertrud Eysoldt

A German soldier lies wounded on the front line in the First World War. To avoid capture or death, he assumes the identity of a fallen French officer. As the German soldier happens to speak fluent French, nobody realizes the deception. The soldier begins a new life in Paris, yet remains in constant fear of being exposed as the ‘enemy’.

In a hospital, the Protestant pastor Heger and the Catholic chaplain von Imhoff are responsible for pastoral care. Cornelie, a senior doctor, has lost her faith in God after the death of her daughter in the war. One day, Cornelie's former lover and father of her deceased daughter, the actor Gorgas, turns up to visit his friend von Imhoff. During these days, Gorgas invites Heger's ten-year-old daughter to visit him at the fairground, where she has a fatal accident on the swing boat. Hegers seems to be broken by this stroke of fate, but finds support in von Imhoff, who even gives him the strength to stop Gorgas from committing suicide. Cornelie regains her faith and stays with Heger.

The wealthy Frenchman Raoul lives with his mother and his cousin Therese in a magnificent villa on the Riviera. Therese is deeply in love with her relative, but he seems to reciprocate only "brotherly" affection. One day, a visitor arrives: the lustful Lydia, a friend of Therese's, known as a man-eating and amoral woman. It isn't long before Raoul, the master of the house, falls completely under the spell of the blonde siren from abroad, and the two become engaged and eventually married.