Hans, living in Vienna during the Great Depression, intends to drown himself in the river after losing his livelihood. While there he meets a girl named Anna after pulling her from the river.
A hunter buys a fine hunting dog from a drunkard for twelve bottles of "Krambambuli" schnapps and forcibly impresses upon the animal that from now on it must obey only him. When he catches the dog's former owner poaching, the dog runs irritably back and forth between the two men until it decides in favor of the gamekeeper - who is shot by the hunter the next moment.
