The daughter of a notorious smuggler is raised as a boy by her foster mother.

Two out of work musicians put on drag to get work in an all girl band. Inevitable comical romantic complications ensue.

Country Dr. Robert Koch is desperate: a tuberculosis epidemic is decimating the children in his district and no one is able to do anything about it. Every fourth child is already sick and the parents must helplessly watch as their young ones die. Now Koch is undertaking to find the cause of the tuberculosis --- something he has already been working on for years --- which has been causing this plague of illness. His work is made more difficult by envy; for example, that of his teacher, who was wounded defending his honor. But his greatest obstacle is the famous Berliner scientist and Reichstag deputy, Privy Councilor Rudolf Virchow: He is extraordinarily skeptical of Koch's theory, that the cause for tuberculosis is a bacteria.

Lilian Harvey plays a young heiress in long-ago France named Madelon who is raised by her grandfather as a boy in order to frighten away fortune hunters. But when the old man dies, her guardian Cesaire wants to marry her off to the rich prefect Barberousse. She is tricked by Cesaire with the portrait of a young man (Viktor von Staal) which is presented to her as that of her future husband. But when Madelone discovers this scheme she flees, again in men's clothing. But on her route to escape, she meets the young man from the portrait and falls in love with him. But Madelone can't give up her disguise right now...

To take a revenge on countess Laura, who slapped him at his proposal, the Governor of the occupied Poland gets her fall in love with a poor student, and exposes him during wedding banquet.

Kuhle Wampe takes place in early-1930s Berlin. The film begins with a montage of newspaper headlines describing steadily-rising unemployment figures. This is followed by scenes of a young man looking for work in the city and the family discussing the unpaid back rent. The young man, brother of the protagonist Anni, removes his wristwatch and throws himself from a window out of despair. Shortly thereafter his family is evicted from their apartment. Now homeless, the family moves into a garden colony of sorts with the name “Kuhle Wampe.”

In the very oldfashioned town of Ostend suddenly 13 suitcases are delivered to the hotel, with a note, that O.F. will be here soon and needs 6 rooms (the hotel just has five). This event, probably the biggest in 300 years, starts a small wave of modernisation, yet everybody is wondering who O.F. is. Journalist Stix and architect Stark have an idea how to use this event. They proclaim, that O.F. is a former citizen of the town, who became a millionaire abroad. They tell their fellow citizens that the town still needs modernisation, like better hotels, nightclubs, shops, etc. And soon, Ostend is a boomtown, then a capital. The architect, responsible for the new buildings is finaly allowed to marry the mayor's daughter, while Stix marries the cabaret star and the widowed mayor his new secretary. The only problem is, O.F. hasn't shown up, while finance experts from all over the world are trying to solve the depression problem.