The Invention of Gustav Lichtenberg

Under the dust of a forgotten archive, the shy physicist Ludwig Lang discovers a treasure: the plan for a mysterious machine, from which the inventive spirit of the 19th century and its great discoveries waft towards him. But what can the perfectly constructed machine, whose plan reveals nothing but the name of its creator, do? There is only one way to unravel the mystery: Ludwig must build the machine. After days and nights without sleep and full of work, a shiny black, cast-iron monster stands in Ludwig's living room. Ludwig gets it running and nothing happens. While the machine apparently only consumes energy, something completely unexpected happens: Ludwig discovers love and opens his heart to the violinist Elsa. Was this what the inventor had in mind? Gustav Lichtenberg, its creator, remains as enigmatic as the machine itself. Lichtenberg slips out of history like a shimmering drop of mercury: he wanders through the annals and appears here and there alongside Edison, Röntgen, Zeiss and many others. Was he really there when the first light bulb lit up? Did he hear the telephone ring before it was even thought up? Great inventors can invent anything - including themselves. But do they also know how to draw a picture of the heart?.