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Reifende Jugend was a variation on the 1933 film hit Maedchen in Uniform, minus the homosexual subtext (after all, Hitler was now in power!) The basic storyline concentrates on the boarding-school training of clean-limned, Aryan youth, all for the greater good of the Fatherland. Heroine Elfriede (Hertha Thiele) has a crush on professor Kerner (Peter Voss), while blond, blue-eyed Nehring (Albert Florath) is hopelessly enamored of Elfriede. This is but one of a surfeit of subplots which have the overall effect of weighing down the film. The subliminal pro-Nazi message of Reifend Jugend is more obvious in retrospect than it was in 1936.