John Glückstadt (1975)

Northern Germany, the mid-19th century. John Hansen, discharged from military service and unemployed, joins forces with the crook Wenzel to commit a burglary, driven by desperation. Hansen is caught by the police and put on trial. The sentence: six years in prison. After serving his time in Glückstadt Penitentiary, he returns to his small hometown in northern Germany, and from then on the residents know him only as John Glückstadt. Hansen takes on odd jobs and meets Hanna, an unskilled laborer. The two marry and soon have a child. But the couple are unhappy; their poverty is too severe, and society, hostile toward them, shuns them because of his criminal record and her low social status. One day, when Hanna reminds her husband of his past, a violent argument breaks out. Hansen strikes his wife so hard that she falls and dies shortly afterward. With the help of his neighbor, however, he manages to conceal the cause of her death. John Hansen now tries to get by alone with his young child. But his daughter is taken from him and placed in an orphanage. Hansen then decides on a desperate act: he intends to kidnap his own child and flee with her to America, where he can start over and build a future for himself and his daughter, untainted by the past.