Old Meiseken, a gingerbread baker, has been dead for three years, but his bosses don’t know that. They’ve been paying him his pension all this time, unaware that his former landlords have been cashing the checks. When, one day, the assistant head of the bakery, Tony, pays a visit to Meiseken’s place to get a hold of an old recipe, someone’s got to play the part of Meiseken! The fraud blows up in the landlords’ faces; but in the end, Tony gets the recipe book and even a new bride.
Before the First World War, Dr. Hans Stockmann had a practice in a small town. His powerhungry brother is the mayor of Bad Trimburg, which has developed into a respectable resort. Dr. Stockmann is called in to become the town’s chief physician. He considers the sanitary conditions to be intolerable and insists on a clean-up. His ambitious brother and all those who, till now, have profited well from the corner cutting, are, of course, against that for financial reasons. The doctor is condemned from all sides and the conflict escalates.
In a district of a small, German principality, things are going haywire. And this, even though Baron von Wehrhahn, who is loyal to the prince, does everything possible to make “his Highness” popular. The only problem is, he’s always using his zeal on the wrong crowd. He always seems to see free-thinkers or revolutionaries in the harmless of citizens; but the really bad ones get to go on their way unmolested! For example, the old woman Wolff: she steals everything that isn’t nailed down, while her husband pursues unhampered poaching.
The newspaper delivery driver Paul falls in love with Lotte, who works in her mother’s kiosk. One day, Paul helps a man in a black Mercedes, who’s been in an accident. While helping him, a notebook has fallen out of the man’s pocket, which Paul thinks is his own and pockets. In fact, the notebook belongs to a band of auto thieves, who’ll now do anything and everything possible to get the book back.
