Königliche Bettler (1917)

Young Eva, the daughter of the wealthy industrialist Roche, has fallen in love with the writer Ferdinand Paul. Nevertheless, one day she decides to marry the renowned sculptor Franz Wandelt. But he loves nothing in his life more than his art, and soon neglects his newlywed wife. Misfortune soon befalls almost everyone involved: Eva has two children, a son and a daughter, and dies shortly afterward. Her son, in turn, is so despairing of his own lack of talent when faced with the gifted Franz that he takes his own life. Eva’s daughter Frieda, however, leaves her egocentric father and moves in with the writer Paul. Abandoned by everyone, Wandelt is left with nothing but art as a “royal beggar.”