The Captain from Kopenick

Wilhelm Voigt (Heinz Ruhmann) has spent many years of his life behind prison walls. As a young man, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for forging postal documents; later, he tried his luck abroad, but homesickness drove him back. A passport offense landed him behind bars once again. After his release, he now tries to make a new life for himself as a shoemaker. In doing so, he finds himself caught in a vicious cycle: without papers, he can't get a job, and without proof of employment, he can't get papers. He would therefore prefer to leave Germany again, but to do so, he needs a passport. Voigt tries to obtain one by breaking into a Potsdam police station, but is caught and sent back to prison. There, as a prisoner, he displays an astonishing aptitude for military thinking. The day comes when the released convict Wilhelm Voigt, with the help of an officer's uniform from a secondhand shop, transforms himself into a Prussian captain in the restroom of the Schlesischer Bahnhof in Berlin.