Muss i denn zum Städtele hinaus (1962)

During a mountain hike in freezing cold, Ronald Brown collapses. His friend, Dr. Werner Koch, realizes that Ronald has a ruptured appendix and saves his life with an emergency operation on the mountain. The globetrotter Werner now decides to settle down, and six months later he sets up as a family doctor in the small village of Herdingen. There he meets the young Heidi and falls in love with her. Heidi is a complete orphan who, six years earlier, was taken in by the brother and sister Herbert and Carola, friends of her parents, who had died suddenly. Herbert, however—whom she calls Uncle Herbert—is secretly in love with her, but suppresses his feelings on Carola’s advice. Jealous, he nevertheless withheld the letters written to Heidi three years earlier by a student she loved. She had great difficulty coming to terms with the fact that, after leaving, the student apparently forgot her. For her 21st birthday, Herbert gives her the inn called the Green Wreath, whose accounts Heidi had previously kept. When Ronald appears in the village one day, it becomes clear that he is the student Heidi had once grieved over. He still loves Heidi, wants to marry her, and travel the world with her. But Heidi also loves Werner, to whom she is connected in another way as well. Heidi’s younger brother, Dieter Hagen, has been arrested because he is accused of stealing a large sum of money from his employer, bank director Sieper, while working as a bank trainee. A matchbook bearing the safe’s secret combination was found in his suit; the money had been stolen from that safe. Dieter escapes from pretrial detention and is hidden by Heidi, who believes he is innocent. Heidi confides in Werner, who hides him in a tool shed on the doctor’s property. Dieter tells him that the matchbook came from a certain Luna Bar in Frankfurt, although Dieter had never been to Frankfurt, let alone to the Luna Bar. At the Green Wreath, Werner overhears a conversation that makes it clear that bank director Sieper regularly spends a lot of money at the Luna Bar. Werner persuades Dieter to turn himself in to the police, and Heidi, disappointed, turns away from him. In reality, however, Werner continues to pursue the investigation. The owner of the Luna Bar testifies that he knows Sieper as Mr. Drews, who enjoys spending large sums of money at his bar, and does so often. Sieper is eventually proven to have committed the crime and arrested, while Dieter is released as innocent. Meanwhile, Heidi has agreed to become engaged to Ronald, and Werner plans to leave town. When Ronald learns from Werner’s employee Röschen that his friend intends to leave because of unrequited love, he makes Heidi choose, and she decides to stay with Werner and in Herdingen. Another love story also has a happy ending: Richie works with Sepp and Otto as a clown in a circus. When the circus goes bankrupt, the three set off, hoping to make their fortune with the Hagenbeck Circus in Hamburg. They get as far as the farm belonging to Eva, a friend of Heidi’s. There they earn money as laborers and help out at the Green Wreath as waiters and singers. In the end, Sepp and Otto travel on to Hamburg, while Richie stays with Eva, and the two are going to get married.