Heideschulmeister Uwe Karsten (1954)

Ursula Diewen, the daughter of Hamburg businessman Ernst Diewen, promises her father on his deathbed that she will marry the merchant Heinrich Heinsius and continue running the company with him. The following year, while making preparations for her wedding, Ursula learns from her friend Martha Detleffsen that her fiancé has an illegitimate child and is still involved with the child’s mother. Ursula promptly breaks off her engagement to Heinrich Heinsius. She seeks rest at Süderhof in the Lüneburg Heath, staying with Mrs. Alslev, whom her late mother often visited. During a visit to the Sunneby parsonage, she meets her landlady’s son, Uwe Karsten Alslev, the heath schoolteacher. It soon emerges that they share a love of music and painting, and before long they grow closer. Jan, a disreputable young man, lives in a remote hut outside the village. His sick daughter Lenchen lives with him and is badly neglected by her single father. Ursula takes the child under her care. This gives her the idea of establishing an Ernst Diewen Foundation, whose purpose would be to build a hospital in the heath for people in need. Through Ursula’s intervention, Martha Detleffsen’s son Hänschen is placed with the childless Sunneby couple. A rumor soon spreads through Süderhof that Hänschen is Ursula’s child and that she came to the heath only to find the teacher a surrogate father for him. When the gossip becomes unbearable, Ursula returns to Hamburg. There she takes up painting again, producing several works featuring scenes from the Lüneburg Heath. She presents her paintings to the public in a highly successful exhibition. With her brother Ludwig’s support, Ursula sets plans for the proposed foundation in motion. Within a few weeks, Ludwig is due to marry Ellen Vanlos, the daughter of the respectable Senator Vanlos. The senator himself has his eye on Ursula; but when he proposes to her, she turns him down because the heath schoolteacher is still on her mind. It is only when the pastor reports that Uwe Karsten has been seriously injured while rescuing Jan from a burning barn that Ursula returns to him. The two soon stand before the altar, although Ursula’s aristocratic family disapproves of this socially unsuitable marriage. There are still a few setbacks afterward, but in the end all the problems are happily resolved.