Lotte Martens

On New Year's Eve 1900, Paul Holzgruber started a new praxis as a radiologist. The young Maximiliane Frey is his assistant and they have worked side by side for years helping people. Holzgruber repeatedly points out the dangers of radiation to Maximiliane, but is silent about the ulcers on his hand and the severe pain they have caused. Maximiliane has gotten to know the widower Axel von Bonin and has fallen in love with him. But then she is diagnosed with incurable cancer. To spare Axel the inevitable grief over her impending death, she leaves him and dedicates what is left her life to medicine.

Marika is a cheerful girl who lives on the Danube aboard an old barge she inherited from her father. She works as a waitress in her aunt's inn, entertaining the guests with singing and dancing. Her greatest dream is to save enough money to repair the old barge and sail down the Danube. One day, she meets three young artists, Georg, Oskar, and Christoph, who all fall in love with her. Together, they put on an open-air revue and raise the necessary money. And with Georg, Marika is lucky in love.

The Viennese seamstress Gabi Berghofer wants to marry an innkeeper. But he marries someone else. Gabi then becomes a model for a painter, who falls in love with her. She spends some wonderful time with him, but he, too, leaves Gabi to return to his family. Desperate and deserted, Gabi stands before the gravestone of the young artist Gabriele Dambrone, who took her life due to heartache. Then she decides to once more take her life in her own hands and to make her old dream of becoming an actress come true.

Herr von Lips is a wealthy landowner, surrounded by money and luxury. But what he lacks is a wife, who really loves him. So he comes up with the plan to mingle among the people in simple clothing to find the missing bride. Three fine friends --- "fine", that is, as long as the money doesn't run out --- wish to set him up with the egoistic hat maker Mathilde. Her employer, Kathi, who has no idea that von Lips is a rich man, falls in love with him for whom he is.