Die Ahnfrau (1919)

Berta, the daughter of Count Zdenko von Borotin, loses her scarf when a gust of wind catches it. It is blown into a castle courtyard, where Jaromir von Eschen notices it and picks it up. He begins to sing a song. Berta hears him and follows the sound. Jaromir hides for fun. At the edge of a forest, Berta falls into the hands of robbers, but Jaromir drives them away with a shot from his rifle. The young noblewoman faints with all the decorum and grace befitting her station. When Berta comes to, Jaromir is once again there to serenade her, and he swiftly captures the lovely maiden’s heart. Some time later, Berta’s father, Count Zdenko von Borotin, has just learned that his cousin has died. This makes Zdenko the last of his line. Berta rushes in and tells her father about the failed robbery and how the nobleman rescued her. Zdenko hopes that the noble stranger might prove to be a worthy future son-in-law and is eager to meet him. Jaromir climbs the vines on the castle wall and meets his beloved on the balcony. Another gust of wind catches something; this time, it is a piece of paper in the fireplace room. A flickering female figure in flowing robes appears out of nowhere. Count Zdenko, who has meanwhile fallen asleep, has just awakened and thinks he sees his daughter before him, like an apparition. Terrified, he cries, “Away!” The apparition disappears. The old man believes he must have dreamed it all and calls for his daughter Berta. She is still flirting with Jaromir and reluctantly tears herself away from her sweetheart. Her father angrily confronts her with what he has just seen, but Berta does not understand a word. She had been on the balcony during the apparition! The servants are summoned, but they know nothing either. The old man concludes: It must have been the ancestress! Count Zdenko explains to those present that the ancestress is a lost soul who appears in the count’s chambers whenever disaster threatens. Her name was also Berta, and her parents once forced her to marry. When she met her lover, her husband stabbed her to death. Meanwhile, the robbers in the mountains are planning their next raid and refuse to let their recent defeat go unanswered. Zdenko and his daughter are worried, and give Jaromir, whom the bandit is pursuing, shelter in the castle. Berta introduces him to her father, and a room is prepared for Jaromir. The following night, the ancestress appears to Jaromir too, and at first he mistakes her for Berta because of their resemblance. Soldiers now want to recruit Jaromir to fight the robbers, but he refuses, explaining that he wants to look after Berta and her father. Count Zdenko, however, is ready to join the soldiers and take up the fight against the robbers. Jaromir soon begins acting increasingly strangely. He climbs out of the window, and then a shot is fired, wounding him in the arm. Berta tends to his wound. One of the soldiers tells her that they nearly caught the notorious leader of the band of robbers. They shot at him and managed to tear off a scrap of fabric. Berta recognizes the material: it matches Jaromir’s clothes. She is deeply shocked. Berta fiercely reproaches Jaromir, but remains devoted to him and wants to hide him from the soldiers pursuing him. Her plan is to flee with him around midnight. Despite Berta’s warning, Jaromir takes the dagger that has hung in its sheath on the wall since the days of the ancestress. It is said to carry a curse. Jaromir hides in the castle’s catacombs, where one of the men he takes for a soldier discovers him. He stabs the man with the dagger and realizes too late that it is Count Zdenko. One of the robbers wants to speak with the gravely wounded man. From him, Count Zdenko learns that his son, whom he believed had drowned twenty years earlier, grew up among the robbers—and that the son is none other than Jaromir. Jaromir also learns that he is related to the old count. Then the gravely wounded man dies. Zdenko’s body is laid out in the castle crypt. Jaromir, the murderer of his own father, is overcome with remorse. Berta appears and collapses dead in her father’s crypt after the ancestress appears to her once more. Finally, Jaromir too meets his end after the ancestress appears to him. Only after the death of the last of the Borotins does the ancestress find eternal rest, and the haunting comes to an end.