Fräulein Raffke (1923)

Contrary to what the title suggests, the film centers on the businessman Raffke himself, not on his adored daughter Lilli, Miss Raffke. Raffke is tough and unyielding in business, but otherwise exceedingly affable. He and his wife, who have both risen from humble beginnings, revel in luxury. They take over the castle of a debt-ridden baron, complete with its furnishings, ancestral portrait gallery, and suits of armor, and show off their servants, carriage, and extravagant clothes. Raffke aspires to something higher and therefore agrees to the wishes of the dubious, scheming Egon von Geldern, who wants to marry Lilli to get his hands on her father’s money. But the engagement party falls apart when Lilli secretly marries Paul, one of her father’s employees. In a rage, Raffke disowns the young couple. Three years later, Lilli and Paul, with their small child, have been reduced to utter poverty by Raffke’s vindictiveness and Paul’s serious illness, and they are starving. Against her husband’s wishes, Lilli asks her father for help, but he refuses to give her anything as long as she stays with Paul. Lilli leaves the child with her parents and goes into the water, but Baron von Geldern rescues her. The story reaches its climax at a lavish costume ball in the castle, where Lilli, temporarily separated from her husband, is living with her child. At the center of the ballroom stands a huge sculpture of a horned bull (a symbol of optimism on the stock market—or is it the golden calf?), around which people dance polonaises, while Raffke rides on its back, smoking an enormous cigar. They spare no expense: “Merry-go-rounds, a slide, and a revolving tabletop—quite in the American style.” During this “Raffke orgy,” Lilli’s child slips away unnoticed. In a side room, Egon von Geldern harasses Lilli, and she runs off. The baron, whose fraudulent intentions have been clear to the viewer all along, is shot in the heat of the moment by his secret lover, the dancer Tatjana (Vivian Gibson). Standing over his body, she accuses Raffke: “Your money took him away from me.” In the end, Lilli, Paul, and their child are reunited, and the reformed Raffke visits the poor neighborhood where Lilli lives with his wife (whom he calls “Mother”): “Mother—in this neighborhood, too, we once started out small and modest—and were very happy …” (Ph. Stiasny in: Filmblatt, 55/56)