Hampels Abenteuer (1915)

Willibald Hampel leads a thoroughly respectable life in a small provincial town alongside his forceful wife, Justine, who has a firm set of moral principles and keeps him firmly in line. One day, a small, down-at-heel theater troupe arrives and stages Romeo and Juliet, a play that, in Mrs. Hampel’s eyes, is highly immoral. Willibald is all the more delighted—but not because of its “high art”; rather, he has taken a fancy to Lola Renée, the pretty young actress. Lola’s overly carefree behavior soon gets her into trouble in the stuffy little town, so she leaves for an engagement in the next district town. But retired Mr. Hampel cannot get the lively performer out of his head, and follows her. To convince his domestic dragon, Justine, that his disappearance will last a while, Hampel hatches a bizarre plan with his best friend, Lämmermeyer: Lämmermeyer is to assume the role of a private detective, arrest Hampel for smuggling saccharin, and take him to the jail in the nearest big city. “Detective” Lämmermeyer tells his bewildered wife that the remand period will last at least two weeks. To reassure his suspicious old lady, Willibald Hampel sends her letters “from jail,” saying that in his lonely cell he misses his Justine terribly. In reality, however, Hampel intends to take a vacation from married life and enjoy himself thoroughly with Lola. Justine, worried about her supposedly imprisoned husband—or perhaps simply suspicious and wanting to get to the bottom of the story she has been told—decides to visit Willibald in prison. This puts Hampel in a fix, and he desperately tries to figure out what he can do to get himself locked up as quickly as possible. But no matter what he does, the police have no intention of arresting and imprisoning him. So he hits on the “brilliant” idea of turning his love nest at Lola’s into a prison cell. When Justine shows up, she immediately sees through the ruse and grabs her husband, dragging him home to hearth and home. There, she magnanimously forgives him for his vacation from married life.