Frau Wirtin hat auch eine Nichte (1969)

Susanne, the landlady from the Lahn, is still traveling the countryside with her acting troupe. At a château in Alsace, they are arrested by Napoleon’s henchmen, who are after Ferdinand, Susanne’s “leading man” in the troupe. The French soldiers mistake him for the rebellious Baron von Ambras, an opponent of Napoleon. Susanne and her uninhibited girls manage to distract the soldiers for a moment. Nevertheless, Ferdinand is arrested and taken away. With the baby of Ambras, whom they found all alone in the château, Susanne and her troupe continue on to Paris to persuade Napoleon to release her Ferdinand. Napoleon is staying at a pleasure pavilion built by Louis XIV, aptly named Monplaisir, where he is negotiating with Russian and Austrian delegations. For dynastic and strategic reasons, Napoleon is determined to marry Marie-Louise, the daughter of the Austrian emperor, while the Russians are equally determined to prevent it. The matter goes so far that the Russian envoy Bulakieff orders his men to kidnap the baby of Ambras, whom they believe to be Napoleon’s child. For Napoleon, however, the child would be proof that he is indeed capable of fathering children. Yet this is precisely what Emperor Franz of Austria doubts, since his French counterpart is still not a father at the age of over 40. For this reason, Emperor Franz does not want to give his daughter Marie-Louise in marriage to the supposedly infertile Frenchman. In this tangled situation, the real Ferdinand is brought before Napoleon. Napoleon realizes that Ferdinand is not Ambras and wants him executed, since in Napoleon’s France there are no miscarriages of justice. Ferdinand now becomes a highly political bargaining chip when the landlady from the Lahn and the French emperor, who knew each other from their time in Giessen, meet again. They come to an agreement: if Susanne helps Napoleon put an end to doubts about his ability to father children, he will see to it that her Ferdinand is released. Before the Austrian and Russian representatives, Susanne herself is to play her own niece in a theatrical farce—the niece with whom Napoleon once fathered this child. The performance succeeds, and all could turn out well if Bulakieff’s henchmen had not snatched the baby from poor Pumpernickel, one of Susanne’s trusted troupe members, whom she had asked to look after it in her absence, and made off with it. Napoleon has got what he wanted, but he wants more: he is determined to capture the anti-Napoleon Baron von Ambras and announces that Ferdinand will not be released until Ambras turns himself in. Otherwise, Ferdinand will be executed in Ambras’s place. When the real Ambras turns up at Susanne’s, searching for his child, whom she had taken from Ambras’s château some time earlier, several Napoleonic soldiers—who have evidently been following him for some time—storm into Susanne’s love nest. The landlady from the Lahn has to act quickly, and she gets into bed with Ambras. The soldiers burst into her boudoir, see Napoleon’s imperial headgear, and immediately leave the room again, since they have to assume that Napoleon is under the bedcovers. A little later, with the help of the Austrian confidant Count Lombardini, Ambras beats up the Russian secret agents. Then, with the help of a female friend, he rescues his baby from the hands of the Russian secret police, and also frees Ferdinand from the dungeon. Ambras then takes Ferdinand’s place in the fortress prison. Now, without any further Russian resistance, Napoleon can marry the Austrian emperor’s daughter, Marie-Louise. The real Ambras is presented to him as the prisoner Ferdinand, and Susanne uses a trick to ensure that the man brought before Napoleon, whom Napoleon believes to be Ferdinand, is released by decree. Ambras thus leaves the court a free man. Meanwhile, Ferdinand has slipped into the scene in the uniform of a Napoleonic guardsman and can at last take his Susanne into his arms again.