Das war in Heidelberg in blauer Sommernacht (1927)

Young Walter Liningen travels to Heidelberg with his father’s blessing to study there. He finds inexpensive lodgings in the home of landowner Wagner. He is soon smitten with Grete, the landowner’s pretty daughter. The young couple’s happiness does not last long, as the worldly, shallow, calculating Hertha von Helling soon inserts herself into their relationship. Thanks to this Circe’s machinations, Liningen first neglects his studies and then his wheat-blonde sweetheart as well. Deeply in debt, he eventually gives up his studies and is jilted by Hertha von Helling, who has no interest in an impoverished lover. Broke and sitting out on the street, he leaves Heidelberg for Berlin and tries to earn a living there as a lute player in a cabaret. He proves to have considerable talent, however, and eventually even achieves fame with his song “It Was in Heidelberg on a Blue Summer Night.” Hertha von Helling then returns to him, too, but by now he finally knows what he has gambled away and lost. A changed man, he returns to Heidelberg to his beloved Grete.