A social drama plays out in the harbor area of Hamburg: Ballhaus-Else, a prostitute, lives together with her boyfriend Leo, a peaceful bar musician, in St. Pauli. One day, Matrosen-Karl, a thief on the run, finds a hideout at Else's. She is fascinated by the man, who promises her a more exciting and better life. Together they want to leave Hamburg. Leo – who feels inferior to Karl – lets them go with a heavy heart. But then Karl gets arrested after a fight between the underworld and the police in the Kongo-Bar, and Else returns to Leo – and her hopeless everyday life.

Expressionistic devices depict the nervous breakdown of a young physician whose patient has died,on whom he had tried out a new serum contrary to his superior's orders.

Rosika, a girl from Genoa, fled her innkeeper stepfather after he tried to abuse her. She finds refuge - and a job as well - in a traveling circus. Cherubini, the owner of the big top, falls in love with the lovely young woman and makes her the star of the show 'Light Cavalry'. But unfortunately for him Rosika's heart beats for Geza, the stable boy.

Heinrich George plays Henner who lives with his wife and child on a tugboat, going on the river to Berlin. There he meets the attractive Gescha (Betty Amann), and a story of love, betrayal and sadness ensues.

In Vienna of 1913 a young woman coming from vaudeville theatre circles stands before the wedding with a construction draftsman; this must move to the military and sends his bride on the country, so that she cannot be enticed to the stage. However, she does it and gets by an officer's love affair so in confusion that she commits suicide. - This end environment-close and differentiates of produced melodrama was rejected by press and audience vehemently; the new second film end with the rescue of the desperate was supplied later, so that in this version only a bittersweet common melodrama with excellent actors and good photograph was left. In the rental company copy is the second version of the end jointly contain.

“Brüder”, a film directed by Herr Werner Hochbaum ( who was a remarkable film director in the talkie 30’s ), was one of those films which showed the harsh daily life of the working class. The film depicts, in a kind of fictional documentary, the 1896 Hamburg dockworkers' strike: the workers receive meagre wages for hard work and live under miserable conditions and finally go on strike (to make matters more personal, one of the strikers has a brother who is a policeman). Even though the inspiration for the story was an event that took place in the XIX century, things had little changed by the troublesome twenties so the story had a perfect contemporary ring. “Brüder” was a co production of the docker's labour union with the SPD (German Social democrat Party); this was nothing unusual for German productions filmed in that era. Political films were often supported by political parties like the SPD or German communist sympathizers since film was such a good vehicle for propaganda. Besides its political and historical interest, this film is very interesting for its artistic merits in spite of Herr Hochbaum's slow pacing. “Brüder” was influenced by the notorious Russian cinema in concept, style and its political message for the working class masses. The documentary angle of the film ( the most important and successful film aspect for this German count ) vividly shows he terrible daily life of the common people in Germany. This is done without embellishment and vividly paints a sad portrait of a common family ( which could be any family ) and their desperation in a country that was torn by continuous civil conflict.