Die Standarte (1977)

The First World War, its final year, 1918. The end of the war is in sight. The young ensign Herbert Menis slips into the Archduchess’s box at the Belgrade Opera so that he can be introduced to her young lady-in-waiting. With the lady-in-waiting, Resa Lang, he experiences his first love, and soon afterward has to watch his ideals crumble piece by piece: an entire regiment of Ruthenian, Polish, and Galician soldiers begins to mutiny and rise up against its military superiors—and thus against the imperial house. Menis receives the regimental standard from the hands of a dying comrade, the symbol of the declining Habsburg Empire. From the moment he receives it, the ensign’s concerns go beyond life and death: honor is at stake—his own and that of his homeland. And so, through every peril, he saves the standard on an adventurous journey back from the battlefield to Vienna. By the time he arrives, it is autumn. Menis witnesses the emperor leave the palace to go into exile. Too late, the ensign comes to realize the futility of everything he has done up to then: his regiment no longer exists, and many of his comrades have fallen. His ideals are shattered. And so, too, does the symbol of his fulfillment of military duty, which he has hitherto defended doggedly and held in honor—the standard—meet its end: in a blazing fireplace in the imperial palace of Schönbrunn.