Patriotic Austrian costume drama, about the martyr Medardus who opposed Napoleon's occupation of Vienna in 1809. The plot proceeds in a series of confrontations with Medardus, his mother and sister, the blind exiled Count of Valois, his ambitious daughter, and Napoleon himself (portrayed as a cool strategist), including several brief flashbacks.

A young Jewish woman in an Eastern European shtetl struggles to reconcile her aspirations with her duty to her family. As her lifestyle grows wilder, her mother is shocked by her immoral behaviour and commits suicide by drowning - repeating "the curse" which has haunted the family for centuries.