Das Geheimnis von D.14 (1915)

Jakob Dungs is an exceedingly ambitious young man from the countryside who is determined to make a career for himself. This leads him to travel by riverboat to the capital. With his girlfriend Marie in tow—she has financed the trip with her savings—they arrive in Berlin. As soon as they get there, Dungs has only one thing on his mind: getting rid of Marie as quickly as possible. After taking her money, he simply leaves her penniless at an inn. With the cash he has swindled from her, Dungs first buys himself a new wardrobe, then visits a cousin who works as a fitter at a large machine factory owned by the industrialist Rupp. When a beam falls from the factory hall’s roof, Dungs throws himself in its path and saves the company director’s daughter. Jakob is badly injured, but while recovering he wins the attention of the grateful young woman and the gratitude of old Rupp. The director’s daughter, however, is involved with the company’s engineer. Dungs now advances his career in the Rupp family business. The boss hires him as his secretary, and Dungs immediately uses his position to plot against the director’s daughter’s boyfriend. As a result, the engineer has to leave the factory—just as the company is about to hand over its pride and joy, the new D 14 super-locomotive, to the government. But there is a flaw in the D 14: it cannot meet the expectations placed on it, especially when it comes to speed. Dungs sees his chance to step in as the man who saves the day. He meets the company’s old engineer, who is regularly drunk and whom everyone calls “Doctor.” Because of his alcohol-related unreliability, the Doctor was once fired and had to go to prison. He boasts that only he can get the D 14 running again, catching Jakob’s attention. From then on, the two work on a new D 14 model in a secret laboratory. Dungs believes this will finally get him to the top of the company. But if he is to hand the plans for the new locomotive over to the company, he demands not only the position of co-director but also Miss Rupp’s hand in marriage, the upstart declares. With heavy hearts, they agree to Jakob’s demands. He and the Doctor work obsessively to bring the D 14 back to life, but one day the two designers have a fierce argument. The Doctor storms out of the laboratory in a rage, not before placing a curse on Dungs. Meanwhile, the dismissed Rupp engineer and Marie, who has been left behind and, whether she likes it or not, has become a woman of the demi-monde in Berlin in order to survive, have joined forces to take revenge on the villainous Dungs. They learn about his secret work in the laboratory and also track down the renegade Doctor, who is only too happy to join them and their revenge plot. Without the Doctor’s help, Jakob Dungs is helpless; he cannot finish the new D 14 on his own. So he promptly tells the company management that, unfortunately, the super-locomotive cannot be completed because the construction plans have been stolen. The engineer, however, catches Dungs secretly packing the D 14’s enormous model components into a huge crate. At a loading station, a massive crane is to dump the experimental locomotive into the sea, simply to destroy all the evidence. The engineer jumps onto the crane and prevents it from being sunk at the last moment. Meanwhile, Marie has arrived at the laboratory to settle accounts with her former lover. He is trying to erase all traces of his actions by planting explosives. There is a tremendous explosion, in which Marie and Jakob Dungs lose their lives. The engineer and the Doctor restore the rescued D 14 and use it to set a new speed record.