Die eiserne Braut (1925)

At the center of the story is the seasoned Captain Dietrich Hartung, who once served in the Imperial Navy and now, in the Weimar Republic, commands the training ship Niobe, also known as “the Iron Bride.” Helmut, the son of shipowner Eyck, serves under him. While at sea, the shipowner’s son is nearly involved in a fatal accident and is saved from drowning only thanks to Hartung’s fearless intervention. When the captain visits the cadet he rescued at home, he also meets his sister, Britta. The two fall in love. For a long time, things have been strained in the Eyck household: after divorcing his wife, a former stage performer, the shipowner took the children in and strictly forbade his former wife from seeing Britta and Helmut again, because after their separation she returned to the profession he considered unworthy. The old man expects both his children to obey his ban on contact. He has also made Captain Hartung, his future son-in-law, promise to respect it. When shipowner Eyck, furious after a reunion with his ex-wife, is fatally injured while out in a motorboat, Hartung, now engaged to Britta, intends to honor his promise by stopping her from seeing her mother, Hermine Eyck, again. But Britta refuses to be told what to do and would rather break off her engagement to the sailor. However, when Britta gets to know her mother’s circle in faraway Oslo, she is repelled by the theatrical life and returns to Germany, remorseful. On the trip home, Britta’s ship is wrecked. Rescue arrives in the form of the German armored cruiser Berlin, now commanded by Captain Hartung. In dramatic circumstances, sailor Külpers dies a seaman’s death during his courageous rescue effort, and the former lovers are reunited at sea. Captain Hartung insists on bringing the sad news to Külpers’s mother, who is waiting at home for her dead son to return. As the dying woman, in her death throes, believes she sees her son returned home, Hartung gently kisses her on the face and then closes her eyes.