Richard Waldemar

Sissy (a character Romy Schneider would later popularize in the 50s) is Duke Maximilian of Bavaria's favorite daughter.The gift of a necklace,meant for her, falls into the hands of a crooked circus director.

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.

After serving a prison sentence for no fault of her own, café violinist Helene seeks out her twin sister Betty, a famous revue star in Vienna engaged to a public prosecutor. During a sailing trip, Betty accidentally drowns. Helene, at first involuntarily, then consciously, assumes her sister’s identity. Blackmail by two criminals soon follows.

Maria, an astounding singer in a music school , is discovered by an impresario who engages her for a concert in Nizza. A nobleman wishing to leave his gambling debts behind accepts money to fake suicide for unrequited love, for publicity's sake. He heads for Paris, not knowing that she is also going to sing there.

A sideshow performer flees to the Danube after a misunderstanding with a deceitful gambler and finds refuge with two Bohemian men, one of whom is a handsome painter she falls for.

The Arch-Duke Herr Sixtus especially cares for Arts and particularly for young ballet students. The same is true of the Arch-Duke A.D.C., Herr Count Paul Paladin who shares with the Arch-Duke a special affection for Frau Elisa Jenkins, a young ballet student. Unexpectedly and thanks to a misunderstanding involving Frau Elisa and the Arch-Duke, the young student will become the new Prima Ballerina of the "Wiener Staatsoper".

Felix Bressart, later one of the most delightful members of the Ernst Lubitsch "stock company," plays the title character in the Austrian comedy Hirsekorn Greift Ein (Hirsekorn Does Something About It). It's a typical worm-turns affair, as a mild-mannered provincial actor ends up working as a chauffeur for a scatterbrained female novelist. Slapstick is the order of the day, except in the scenes involving heroine Charlotte Susa. Guiding the actors through their paces was Rudolf Bernauer, a stage actor-manager of vast experience. Critics in 1931 felt that Hirsekorn Greift Ein was too thin to be stretched to 90 minutes.