Banker Rudi Moebius and his counselor arrive in Wien for an arranged marriage which should solve their financial problems. Only they don't know, but Lucie Weidling is broken too, and in love with Gustl, a musician without the courage to elope. Meanwhile Rudi meets Steffi and falls in love not even knowing her name. He and Lucie become good friends and decide to help each other.

Out of unlikely circumstances an underground ticket vending girl and a mail pilot fall in love.

Der Gelbe Schein was shot at the end of WW I in a partly Jewish neighbourhood in Warsaw, the so called Nalevsky-Quarters. Poland still was occupied by German troops at that time. Parts of the movie were filmed at the Ufa-Union-Ateliers in Berlin Tempelhof though. Der Gelbe Schein was planned as propagandistic movie against the Russian Empire of the Czar. But it premiered not before the 22nd of November 1918 when the empire had collapsed already. Today Der Gelbe Schein is an early example of a movie featuring a studied woman as heroine while being in the same time the spectacular case of a German Propaganda-Film with a philosemitistic message.