Egon und das achte Weltwunder (1964)

Egon Brümmer and his tough young “Boys” are a fixture of the Borkenheide Musical Club. When the club-house manager bans them from rehearsing on his premises, Egon and his friend Paul take out their frustration on a visitor to a Christmas party being held nearby. Both are sentenced to six months in prison for assault, with the sentence not suspended. When Egon gets out of prison, he wants to leave his old life behind. He tries to avoid the Boys, but they have no understanding of his change of heart. As before his prison term, he starts working as a laborer on a construction site. At a school-leavers’ ball, Egon meets the young Christine Lange, who wants to study medicine. Her friends call her the “eighth wonder of the world,” because it would be a miracle if she ever fell in love. Egon pretends to be a construction specialist, and the two dance together. He invites her to one of his group’s concerts, but she tells him that over the next few weeks she will be taking part in a work project at the youth project “Große Wiese.” When the Boys occupy the youth club, a fight breaks out, and Egon gets caught up in it too. Disappointed, Christine turns away from him. The next day, Egon is summoned from the construction site by the Free German Youth secretary. He learns that he is to be assigned to a six-week work project at “Große Wiese” to make a fresh start. He eagerly agrees, since he will see Christine there again. In front of the Boys, he pretends the assignment is punishment for the fight at the youth club and that he is going only reluctantly. The Boys show their solidarity with him and want to go along at once, but Egon refuses. Paul insists on accompanying Egon on his own. The day before they leave, Egon gives Paul enormous amounts of alcohol and hides his alarm clock, so Paul oversleeps. Egon tells the other travelers that Paul has changed his mind, and the Borkenheide group sets off without him. At “Große Wiese,” Egon becomes the group’s spokesman, organizes the work, and keeps everyone together. Before long, his fellow workers elect him brigade leader. Along with Werner Schmiedeberg, the new club-house manager in Borkenheide, he also decides that the young men in the group should voluntarily sign a pledge not to have romantic relationships with the girls during the work project, since work is meant to come first. Soon, Egon’s brigade stands out for its excellent results. Egon himself finds it difficult to keep the pledge he signed, because he has fallen in love with Christine. In time, she too realizes that he is serious. But his attempts to tell her about his time in prison come to nothing. To keep the Boys and Paul at a distance, he writes to them that the work project is dreadful. This has the opposite effect: the Boys travel there to support him. They realize he has lied to them. Paul, in particular, threatens to tell Christine and the rest of the brigade about Egon’s prison sentence. They write a speech for him, since he is supposed to speak as brigade leader at the project’s halfway celebration. During the speech, Egon repeatedly stumbles over his words and eventually abandons it altogether. When the Boys then try to welcome him back into their fold, he publicly breaks with them. In front of the assembled young people, he also admits that he has been in prison. An uproar breaks out, and Christine leaves sadly. The Boys are expelled from the camp. Werner Schmiedeberg has realized that Egon has changed for the better. He quietly arranges a reconciliation meeting between Egon and Christine, and the two do indeed get back together.