Fired for marrying his sweetheart Emma instead of his boss’s daughter, Hans  moves his pregnant wife to Berlin where he gets a job as a salesman.

A decade after the death of an eccentric millionaire, his remaining relatives gather for the reading of the will at his abandoned mansion. Tension builds after his niece is named the sole inheritor and it is revealed that one of the other relatives will get everything if the heiress goes insane within the next 30 days.

An opium-addicted choirmaster, John Jasper (Claude Rains), becomes obsessed with a young student named Rosa Bud.