Die geheime Macht

For centuries, the water supply of a mountain village has depended on an endangered, wooden water pipe. The young engineer Josi blows a channel in the rock. After initial resistance, the villagers are excited about it. The film was based on a novel by Jakob Christoph Heer.

The daughter of a reclusive couple in the St. Moritz mountains tends to her brother, disabled from the Great War, though a handsome young architect who has just arrived waits for her attentions.

A deranged woman artist falls in love with a young sculptor. The impossible love ends tragically.

Miss Annemarie Tessmer is a clerk in the house of the manufacturer Herman Schilling and she is indispensable. She is exploited by all the family members and her own life is completely in the background. Herman Schilling wants his daughter Thea merry with the representative for foreign affairs Dr. Richard Rauch. However, after a number of dramatic complications, Richard chooses for the good, selfless and hardworking Annemarie.

Frank returns to his homeland as an engineer, falls in love with Regine, the housemaid of his uncle, and marries her. Thanks to the intrigues of Floris, one of Frank's rejects, Regine is suspected of having an affair with another man. Depressed and desperate, she intends to commit suicide, but is saved by Frank in the last minute.

London at the time of the War of the Spanish Succession. Queen Anne's followers are divided into two factions: one side, led by Lord Bolingbroke, is pushing for peace talks and a quick reconciliation with France; the other side, led by the influential Duchess of Marlborough, is in favor of continuing the war. Queen Anne herself is still undecided, and so a game of intrigue unfolds at court between Bolingbroke and Marlborough, each trying to win the queen over to his side.

In Bremen, a ship is launched, which was built by Thomas Holk. That evening, he gets to know the middle-aged widow Ada Rasmus, who flirts heavily with him. The next day, Thomas travels to Hallbad on vacation and the two lose sign of each other. In this rural idyll, he gets to know Krist and falls in love with her. He takes her back with him to Bremen and his aunt introduces her into society. Her natural charms enchants everyone and the beautiful widow Ada swears revenge. She finds a way to bring Ada into a painful situation with Dr. von Cremona, and, to top it all off, a man’s coat is found in her room.

Gustav Froehlich and Charlotte Susa play Rochus and Judith, the zwei menschen (two humans) of the title. Rochus' domineering mother insists that he enter the priesthood, but he is reluctant to break up his blissful romance with the fair Judith. A religious fanatic of the first order, the mother swears before God and her Church that Rochus will indeed take his vows. When this does not come about, she dies of grief, whereupon the guilt-stricken Rochus abandons Judith to become a priest. The girl subsequently commits suicide -- and it is Rochus who must officiate over her body during the funeral. This final scene was excised from the print of Zwei Menschen released in New York, leaving audiences hanging in regard to Judith's ultimate fate.

On a train's way to the Italian Alps, the jewelry of a wealthy young widow is stolen and a military veteran working as a waiter is the first to come under suspicion.

In order to punish her cold, brutal aristocratic husband for murdering her lover, a woman becomes a common prostitute to shame him.

A successful German overseas merchant with a plantation in Haiti is looking for a suitable wife in Hamburg and comes across a barmaid from the Reeperbahn with an illegitimate child. He wants to marry her, but she does not follow him out of nobility. In search of her, he finds her in Mexico as the secretary of his former lover, a writer.

Women are being sent to an all male settlement. The marriages are planned in advance, but not everything goes according to plan.