Grete Hartmann

A small banking family is put to the test: Brigitte, the wife of the banker Sparrenberg, has a secret: she was once the lover of the fraudster Baron Gaffris, who once used her to get close to well-off businessmen. Now Gaffris is trying to use her to trick her husband. After a fight between Brigitte and Gaffris, Brigitte’s daughter Ina seeks out the baron in an attempt to help her mother. Afterwards, the baron’s suddenly found dead on the floor. Brigitte takes all the blame, goes to the cops and admits to having stabbed Gaffris.

Sir Robert Chiltern is a successful Government minister, well-off and with a loving wife. All this is threatened when Mrs Cheveley appears in London with damning evidence of a past misdeed. Sir Robert turns for help to his friend Lord Goring, an apparently idle philanderer and the despair of his father. Goring knows the lady of old, and, for him, takes the whole thing pretty seriously.

At the start of the 18th century, British Queen Anne, inspired by her German born lady in waiting, emancipates the country's farmers and peasants.