Schwarzwaldmädel (1950)

At a stage ball, the young painter Hans Hauser meets the secretary Bärbele Riederle, who has come dressed as a Black Forest girl. Hans Hauser is close friends with the revue star Malwine Heinau, who is also at the ball with her stage partner, Richard Petersen. Malwine, the star of the grand ice revue at the Crystal Palace, is wearing a valuable piece of jewelry that the jeweler Bussmann had actually provided only for publicity photographs. His employee, Theo Patzke, who is responsible for the jewelry’s security, has fallen so deeply in love with Malwine that he could not refuse her request to wear it at the ball that evening, too. To his horror, he suddenly spots his boss, Fritz Bussmann, among the partygoers. Thinking quickly, he has Malwine hand the jewelry over to him. When Bärbel Riederle, Bussmann’s secretary, notices that Patzke is drinking more than is good for him, she takes the jewelry into her own safekeeping. Malwine, as always, flirts unabashedly with all the men; Mr. Bussmann is among her admirers, too. Cheekily, she asks, “Must love always be a tragedy?” Her stage partner does not take her flirtation seriously, but Hans Hauser decides that this evening he will show her what it feels like for a partner when someone behaves that way. And the delightful “Black Forest girl,” Bärbele Riederle, comes in very handy. Unexpectedly, over the course of the evening, he genuinely falls in love with the young woman. But, as the saying goes: “Girls from the Black Forest aren’t easy to win!” When he looks around for her, his “Black Forest girl” has vanished. Bärbele has won a small car, the top prize in the raffle, and set off for the Black Forest to fill in for her aunt, who is housekeeper to cathedral choirmaster Römer in the Black Forest village of St. Christoph. In her hasty departure, she forgot to pass the jewelry on to the jeweler. So Theo Patzke has to follow her. Jeweler Bussmann, in turn, believes Theo Patzke intends to keep the jewelry for himself, and follows him. In the end, they all meet again in St. Christoph, since their friends Hans Hauser and Richard Petersen, along with Malwine Heinau, also intend to spend their holiday in the Black Forest. The matter of the jewelry is quickly cleared up. Mr. Bussmann stays anyway, because he thinks he has a chance with Malwine: “Malwine, oh Malwine.” The innkeeper of the “Blue Ox” would dearly love to match his well-to-do guest with his daughter, Lorle. But Lorle is involved with the farmhand Gottlieb, who will brook no rival when it comes to his girl and watches everything Fritz Bussmann does with suspicion. Cathedral choirmaster Blasius Römer, too, who has got to know Bärbele better while she has been filling in at his house, quietly hopes to win the charming young woman. Richard Petersen wants to reconcile his friend Hans with Malwine, but Hans has other plans by now. He knows that Bärbele is the one for him. The slighted Malwine, however, puts every possible obstacle in the couple’s way. But it does end happily after all: at the grand Cecilia festival, with Bärbele as the Black Forest queen in the procession, the violins later play “for the dance,” and Hans can finally take his Bärbele in his arms. And Richard Petersen, now that his friend is no longer interested, can finally confess his love to Malwine. And of course Lorle and Gottlieb get their happy ending, too. Only cathedral choirmaster Römer, Fritz Bussmann, and Theo Patzke are left empty-handed: “In spring you can think it over, but when autumn comes, give up!”