Oliver and Peter, two boys at a boarding school, are both poor students and troublemakers in the broadest sense. They run away from the school, which threatens to ruin their vacation and are trapped in the lair of an eccentric former educator, the reactionary and mentally unbalanced Professor Max Niedlich. He is obsessed by his dream of finding gold in the Hohe Tauern mountains. The adventure turns into a nightmare. The boys are forced to study, follow orders and work their fingers to the bone. Aided by a girl named Helga, they manage to escape. At least the trying events had some educational value.