Gottfried Jonathan, a small civil servant, lives as a lodger and is roommates with the blonde Käthe. Although she tries very hard, she can’t find a job and can no longer afford her rent of 40 marks. Jonathan secretly loves Käthe and decides to raise the necessary money for her.
Young Anny returns from school to her circus family, which runs a little venue at the town fair. When Anny suddenly has to fill in for one of the artists, her piano-playing not only enthrals the audience, but also theatre agent Horbes. He casts the whole family for the Apollo theatre in Berlin, where Anny quickly raises to stardom and is offered an engagement from the US.
Steffi is in love with the unemployed musician Pepi. Still, her father the musical instrument retailer, Ignaz Korn, wants her to marry one of his card playing buddies, the butcher Burgstaller. When the typesetter, Cäsar Grün, purposely misprints a winning lottery number in the newspaper, Korn and Burgstaller, thinking they have won, pay the drinks for everybody in the Bock Café and then give away their businesses.
A feature-length jewish joke: The heavily indebted Sami Bambus fakes his death, so that his debts are taken over by the greedy heirs, led by the scrounger Prellstein. The putative heir also brings speculators to the scene, and the general confusion can ultimately only be reconciled by the summoned uncle Salomon and by Samis' return from the dead.