Die Brüder Schellenberg (1926)

The twins Michael and Wenzel Schellenberg are two completely different characters, but both have found jobs at the explosives factory owned by the industrialist Raucheisen. In character and temperament, Wenzel is the absolute opposite of Michael. As a lowly secretary to the old Raucheisen, he is concerned only with getting ahead, while Michael looks beyond his own immediate interests and is always concerned for other people’s well-being. Nevertheless, one day they both lose their jobs: Wenzel for being slightly late, something the old man refuses to overlook; Michael, an engineer with a degree of responsibility, because he can no longer reconcile manufacturing weapons of mass destruction with his moral convictions. Then a massive explosion occurs on the factory grounds, killing more than 200 workers. This event becomes a major turning point in the lives of the Schellenberg brothers. From then on, Wenzel wants only to make a lot of money quickly, and so he begins speculating on the stock market, while Michael wants to put his charitable nature into practice and devote his strength to the poor, the desperate, and others in need. As an engineer, he knows how to build a humane settlement for the unemployed. Wenzel’s pursuit of pleasure also leads him astray in his private life. He meets and falls in love with Jenny Florian, an unemployed actress whose boyfriend Georg was seriously injured in the factory explosion, and gets the young, pretty woman a theater engagement. Before long, however, he leaves her and turns to the cold Esther Raucheisen, the somewhat bizarre daughter of his former boss. Esther, with her porcelain-like appearance, has a dark soul and has run into trouble because of similar dealings by her lover, Kaczinsky. Esther and Wenzel are an ideal match: both are calculating and cold, and neither is really capable of deep emotions. Wenzel promises Esther that he will help her if she agrees to marry him. The calculating industrialist’s daughter agrees … and the marriage proves to be a thoroughly loveless affair. The aloof Esther refuses her parvenu husband his conjugal rights and secretly continues her relationship with the crook Kaczinsky. One day Wenzel learns of her continuing infidelity, and disaster follows: In a rage, the cuckolded Wenzel strangles his faithless wife and descends into madness. After the murder, he is taken away in a barred asylum van. Meanwhile, Jenny, whom he abandoned, has found a cozy place in Michael’s settlement colony. At the end, Wenzel walks through a snow-covered landscape toward the settlement, dressed in penitential garb, to make amends there.