Das verwunschene Schloß (1918)

Twenty years ago, the Count of Groningen left his ancestral castle. Ever since, it has supposedly been haunted. Shortly before fleeing its dark halls, the Count had entrusted his newborn child to the care of Grödner, the estate manager and farmer. But the wicked Grödner had already switched his own child, Veronika, with the Count’s baby in the cradle, apparently hoping that this way he might one day come into possession of the castle. Now Gisela and Veronika are growing up like sisters on the estate. One day, while out walking, the two girls meet a traveling singer named Gontard. He is soon taken with Veronika. At the same time as Gontard arrives, a new magistrate turns up in the village. He has been sent to find out what lies behind the ghost stories about Groningen Castle. The following evening, there is a dance in the village. Veronika, Gisela, and Gontard are all there. While Franz, a villager, flirts with his Gisela, Gontard and Veronika notice a beam of light shining from the supposedly uninhabited castle. The villagers are alerted, and they go to Grödner to demand the key to the castle gate. But Grödner is nowhere to be found. The magistrate is not wrong to suspect that Grödner has been staging the haunting for purely selfish reasons, to keep strangers away from the castle. However, the official lacks the evidence needed to nail Grödner and lock him up for gross mischief. Veronika and Gontard grow closer and closer; the young man discovers a medallion around her neck, one he once gave to a girl he had just pulled from a lake. Now old Ursula, once the wet nurse to the Count’s daughter, also recognizes Gontard as the nephew of the old Count. She urges him to get the castle key from Grödner and take possession of the castle. Grödner now sees not only his hopes of owning the castle slipping away; he realizes that his baby swap from twenty years ago is in danger of being exposed. He flies into a rage. Gontard becomes suspicious and searches through documents, which finally confirm his suspicion that the estate manager had switched the babies. For Franz, this is a blessing: he had thought his “Gisela” was the Count’s daughter, whom he could not possibly marry because of their difference in social standing. Gontard and Franz now set out together to put a stop to the villainous Grödner. They sneak into the castle and plan to wait for Grödner, who will surely return to stage more ghostly light displays at night. Sure enough, the estate manager appears, and a fight breaks out. As he lies dying, the villain confesses to the baby swap. Using a cipher hidden in Veronika’s medallion, the two men manage to open a locked iron door, behind which Grödner had most recently imprisoned Veronika and the nurse. Now Gontard can finally marry the false Veronika, who is in truth Countess Gisela.