8:15 pm. Beer and chips are ready. Calm now! And please no more calls or conversations. The "crime scene" can begin.
He has become sacred to the Germans. Your favorite Sunday ritual. An annual average of 2.7 million people attend church services. The most recent "Tatort: Monsieur Murot's Vacation" (November 22nd) saw 8.27 million people. A rather average figure, because when Thiel and Boerne from Münster go on the hunt for criminals, over eleven million hang out in front of the TV.
The crime series celebrates its 50th birthday next Sunday. Since the first film "Taxi to Leipzig" with Walter Richter (1905-1985) as the grumpy Hamburg investigator Paul Trimmel on November 29, 1970, 148 police officers – and a crazy customs inspector named Kressin – have been hunting criminals in over 1,100 episodes.
The country has changed tremendously in the meantime, and so have the people, only the "crime scene" still works according to the same scheme: Good wins (almost) always and everywhere. What did the "Tatort" series not have to experience: "Five Chancellors, ten Federal Presidents", counted the "time", including the fall of the Wall, the end of the GDR, reunification, a share crash, a refugee crisis – and Corona, the wildest of all post-war dramas. Almost everything has changed, except for one thing: Evil is always and everywhere.
Why do Germans love their Sunday thriller so much?
For the Karlsruhe literature professor Stefan Scherer from the KIT Research University, the "crime scene" is typically German. It shows the federalist order of the Federal Republic, in that each broadcaster of the ARD lets its own investigators go to catch the perpetrators. "This makes it possible to continually introduce new concepts that reflect the mentality and lifestyle of the time." You can see how the home has become "more diverse and open", said Scherer in the media service "W&V".
The "crime scene" – a familiar mirror of the German state of mind? Prof. Scherer has analyzed that it is "unique in the German television landscape" and interlinks the "principle of completed follow-up actions with elements of the continuation story". A "true society novel of the Federal Republic of Germany".
In addition, with "Tatort" – similar to the earlier "Lindenstrasse" (TV series, 1985-2020, the first) – there are almost family relationships between fiction and reality. Nothing, except football, is as controversial as the last thriller on Sunday evening. This creates a feeling of togetherness.
Unchanged identification marks
It starts as always. The 32-second opening credits have remained almost unchanged since the series began and "has been written in the memory of generations," says ARD. You can see ice blue eyes, a crosshair, then running legs, first forward, then backward. Plus the famous "Tatort" music by jazz musician Klaus Doldinger (84), while Udo Lindenberg (74) was on the drums in the first version. The eyes and legs belong to the actor Horst Lettenmayer, who received a fee of 400 D-Marks for this.
The dramaturge Gunther Witte (1935-2018) is the inventor of the "crime scene". As Liane Jessen, head of television games at Hessischer Rundfunk (HR) for many years, told "Die Zeit", he should have given out the recipe: Just no art cinema stories, no complicated previews and flashbacks, in the first few minutes dead or a dead person, then the investigation: who was it – and why?
Lustful experiments against the theorem
His experimental episodes with Chief Inspector Felix Murot, played by the fabulous Ulrich Tukur (63), prove that HR, of all people, is particularly happy to act against this theorem. In the most recent film last Sunday, Murot investigated his murderer who ran him over. But no, it was just the doppelganger, an over-the-top car salesman, who stayed on the track or the country road, while Murot made the widow – and perpetrator – happy and the spectators staggered dizzy to bed.
Tukur had a similar encounter with himself in 2015 in "Tatort: Who am I?" Good question: The actor complains to his alter ego, the inspector, that he is acting too carelessly for him, after all he is a police officer. Murot replies: "I? Am here nothing. I'm just an idea. But I also want to live sometimes, sometimes be real." Then he left – and Tukur was left disturbed. The audience too …
The people of Munich determined the most frequently
Of the 148 commissioners, the Munich team Ivo Batic (Miroslav Nemec, 66) and Franz Leitmayr (Udo Wachtveitl, 62) from Bayerischer Rundfunk have so far identified the most frequently. Lena Odenthal (Ulrike Folkerts, 59) from Ludwigshafen, the longest-serving "Tatort" commissioner, has been in the service for 31 years. The most famous of all "Tatort" police officers was Horst Schimanski (Götz George, 1938-2016), a bull in the Ruhr area who let the tatters fly wonderfully. The most popular investigators are Chief Inspector Frank Thiel (Axel Prahl, 60) and the crazy forensic doctor Prof. Dr. Dr. Karl-Friedrich Boerne (Jan Josef Liefers, 56).
The most successful "crime scene" was "Red – red – dead" on New Year's Eve 1978. Over 26 million viewers saw inspector Lutz (Werner Schumacher, 1921-2004) hunt down the woman murderer Konrad Pfandler (Curd Jürgens, 1915-1982).
The HR "crime scene" called "Born in pain" (2014) with Commissioner Murot had the most deaths (51). The Hamburg crime thriller "Kopfgeld" (2014) only had 19 fatalities, and Til Schweiger (56) as police rambus Nick Tschiller mumbled his few sentences into the crack of shots.
Many "crime scene" investigators also died on duty
Some "Tatort" investigators died on duty, including two in Bremen: In 2013 Leo Uljanoff (Antoine Monot, Jr., 45) was stabbed to death in "Tatort: He will kill", Chief Inspector Nils Stedefreund (Oliver Mommsen, 51) was stabbed to death in 2019 in the "Tatort: Where has my sweetheart gone?" shot. The Hamburg undercover investigator Cenk Batu (Mehmet Kurtulus, 48) was caught in 2012 in the "Tatort: The Ballad of Cenk and Valerie", he died from the bullet of a SEK sniper.
In the Cologne "Tatort: Franziska" crime assistant Franziska (Tessa Mittelstaedt, 46) was strangled by a hostage taker in 2014. For actress Jella Haase (28) the "Tatort: In One Stroke" (2016) from Dresden was the first and last as a police candidate Maria Magdalena Mohr. The youngest victim is the Münster commissioner Nadeshda Krusenstern (Friederike Kempter, 41), who blessed the time in the crossover "Tatort: The Team" (2020).
The Berlin chief inspector Felix Stark (Boris Aljinovic, 53) caught it in 2014. The killer shot, Stark remained lying, and in the clinic the doctor answered the question of whether he would survive with "maybe". Enough. With that he gave the film its title. Imagine if he had said: You don't know exactly anything …