It was named after Große Freiheit (grand freedom), a street next to Hamburg's Reeperbahn road in the St. Pauli red light district.

But he acts too slowly and she falls in love with his rival Willem (Hans Söhnker) and Hannes returns to the sea.

Due to the threat of Allied bombing raids to Hamburg Harbour and to the Ufa studios in Berlin's Neubabelsberg and Tempelhof when it was made in 1943 (May to November), most of the movie was shot in Prague's Barrandov Studios by Helmut Käutner, as the first Agfa colorfilm by Terra.

[citation needed] Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels was dissatisfied, and demanded many changes to make the film more "German", for instance by renaming the lead role from Jonny (as in Albers' earlier hit song "Good bye, Jonny") to Hannes.

It remained banned in Nazi Germany, opening on 6 September 1945 in Berlin's Filmbühne Wien after the Allied victory.