The greengrocer Ferdinand Strubel wants his daughter Marianne to marry the son of the brewery owner Baron von Schnackenberg. Since Strubel is an impossibly cheap bastard, the marriage is to take place on 20 May, which, coincidentally, is the same day the city is having a grand festival for him to celebrate his company's being in business for 100 years. Marianne, however, has fallen in love with Leopold, a gym teacher; and when he reads an article in the newspaper about the upcoming arrival of Haley's Comet on 19 May, he comes up with an idea how he can prevent the wedding from taking place: He tells Strubel that the world is going to come to an end when the comet shows up, so that Strubel will see the errors of his way, cancel the arranged wedding and will become a better person for it. (Sucker!).

The student Leopold wants to marry blonde Kathrein, the landlady of the "Golden Goose" in Wurzburg. To discourage Leopold, Kathrein's aunt Minna writes to Leopold's father Valentin, whose been known as "Krambambuli" since his student days. When Leopold's parents arrive on the scen, his father speaks to Kathrein and realizes that she is in love with Stefan, the Kellermeister at the Golden Goose. But Leopold's mom has already told Stefan, that Leopold will marry Kathrein and, because of this, Stefan now wants to leave the Golden Goose.

A musician beds down a prostitute he knows is diseased in order to gain inspiration, an act he later believes to have been a tacit pact with Satan