It is called “confabulation” when someone remembers things that did not happen. Confabulating can play an important role in the investigation of criminal offenses. Because if stuff is suggestible inside, false truths may arise. In the early 1990s, 25 adults out of 16 children were accused of alleged mass abuse in three high-profile trials. In Worms, a social worker had allegedly found evidence of abuse in children entrusted to her, she questioned other children, and a pediatrician confirmed the suspicions.
After three years of tearing families apart and placing children in care facilities, the entire charge turned out to be false: there had been no mass abuse. Meanwhile, one of the falsely accused had died in prison, marriages had broken up, sons and daughters had become estranged from their parents, and some of the children had indeed been victims of abuse – in the very home they had been sent for protection.
The series Believe, which was awarded two prizes at this year’s Canneseries series festival, deals with this monstrous case through gang. The protagonist is defense attorney Dr. Schlesinger, a solitary figure, with whom Peter Kurth’s down-to-earth and patient portrayal even makes clichés appear convincing: The taciturn widower drinks and smokes a chain; while his booth gradually littered, he ignores the gambling debts he – apparently – has accumulated with an ominous Chinese mafia. As a sidekick, Ferdinand von Schirach, who wrote the scripts, gave him, of all people, the woman who is supposed to collect those debts, and initially beaten the lawyer up for it: The rental bully Azra (Narges Rashidi), the Schlesinger from suggested personal Subsequently commissioning the founding oneself is a kind of “Modesty Blaise”. She wears expensive leather blouses and ten-centimeter high heels, is feared in restaurants across the city and therefore ensnared everywhere, is even less taciturn than Schlesinger (it must have been a nice challenge to shorten all of Azra’s sentences to a single noun), and hers Favorite weapon is the hammer – which gives the term “hammer bride” a completely new connotation.
Right is not morality
These two different areas – the oppressive history of the Worms trials, which lasted from 1994 to 1997, and the classic, eccentric crime thriller – were brought together by von Schirach and brought into the present. That trick gives the author and lawyer the opportunity to deal with the spread of rumors through social media: the thesis of the abusive parents is carried on from the start through thousands of tweets and comments. “Do you know why there is social media?” Von Schirach lets his solid lawyer philosophize. “People can’t stand being quiet when there’s nothing more to say,” he replies to himself.
With the usual didactic claim, von Schirach’s focus is primarily on the discourse on law and morality: One of the problems Schlesinger is grappling with is the widespread assumption that “morality” plays a role in the judiciary. “They believe that justice means enforcing morality,” says Schlesinger in a conversation, which is impressive for a crime series, to the social worker who allegedly found evidence of abuse. “Justice must always be moral,” replies the woman (Katharina M. Schubert). And thus makes the common mistake of combining the fluid, subjectively fluctuating value of “morality”, depending on society, epoch and personal feelings, with the fixed legal term. Indeed, it is imperative that law be independent of morality.
An oppressive and unbelievable scene at the beginning, in which von Schirach has the pediatrician describe the alleged signs of abuse in medical language while examining a little girl, is supposed to wake up the audience and draw them in – an ambivalent method. Fortunately, the series largely dispenses with drastic, speculative and sensationalistic elements, the children hardly appear any more, so that their supposed (and real) suffering cannot be exhibited any further.
Instead, focus Believe on the investigation, on brooding conversations – and on expert knowledge, which von Schirachs eagerly interspersed as always: that a criminal defense lawyer has to be on duty in Germany even at night, one learns just as en passant as the “live control” that is common in prisons, or what is meant if an “urgent application” is made in court: This means that someone suspects bias. To loosen up the tough material, von Schirach also relies on a certain fantasy aspect that blows around the mega-strong and intrepid Azra when she beats men twice as tall and heavy from the wrist in high heels and a designer jacket – and of course some trauma as well carries around with him: Women don’t turn into thugs just like that.
The entertaining comic reliefs, such as Schlesinger’s attempt to make his lonely man’s life a little more charitable by buying a goldfish, also provide distance and relaxation. The goldfish, which Schlesinger buys from a bad-tempered animal saleswoman, doesn’t last long in the cramped glass ball. But who is surprised? Always swimming in circles doesn’t get anywhere.
Ferdinand von Schirach – Faith Mini-series with 7 episodes on RTL +, from November 4th
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