S1 (1913)

Gertrud, daughter of General von Hessendorf, had just managed to persuade her father to take her along on a test flight of the new airship. But only days later, it lies shattered on the ground. The experts refuse to let the disaster discourage them. They discuss ways to improve the air fleet and bring up plans for a new type of aeroplane, developed in Copenhagen by a young inventor named Johnson. Gertrud is secretly engaged to Count Baldini. But he is acting on behalf of a spy ring, for which he is supposed to spy out the new aeroplane, and uses his fiancée to get hold of the plans. He persuades her to introduce him to the inventor and gets the latter to provide him with copies of the plans in exchange for payment. Gertrud is thus caught between her feelings and her loyalty to her fatherland. She informs her father of the scheme, whereupon he withdraws his consent to Baldini’s marriage to her: “Never will I give my daughter’s hand to a secret enemy of my fatherland!” he says in an intertitle. Torn between love of her country and loyalty to the man she loves, Gertrud finally refuses to flee with Baldini and takes the plans back from him. Her father officially acquires the plans for the flying machine, which is completed a year later and is to be called “S1.” The closing intertitle, “The happiness of the fatherland is the happiness of all,” becomes a patriotic apotheosis over Gertrud’s lost private happiness in love.