"Crime Scene" check How corrupt is the justice system in Switzerland?
Rotten apples among the civil servants? In "Tatort: Ad Acta", Black Forest investigators Friedemann Berg (Hans-Jochen Wagner, pictured) and Franziska Tobler (Eva Löbau) found out that the bad guys can buy the state.
Image: SWR/Patricia Neligan
In "Tatort: Ad Acta", Franziska Tobler (Eva Löbau) and Friedemann Berg (Hans-Jochen Wagner) have to solve the murder of a young lawyer whose stepfather works primarily for the bad guys of this world.
Image: SWR/Patricia Neligan
Lawyer Rainer Benzinger (August Zirner, right) represents the client Sebastian Erhardt (Sascha Maaz), whom Berg also knows. Erhardt was - and is? - criminally active in the rocker milieu.
Image: SWR/Christian Koch
Nader Mansour (Hassan Akkouch), the dead man's husband, and Maki Benzinger (Akiko Hitomi, right), the victim's mother, cannot believe that lawyer Tobias Benzinger has been virtually executed.
Image: SWR/Patricia Neligan
Maki Benzinger (Akiko Hitomi), mother of the dead man, and his husband Nader Mansour (Hassan Akkouch), arrive at the crime scene in horror.
Image: SWR/Patricia Neligan
Assistant Andi Beuter (Daniel Friedl) has to be set up by Franziska Tobler (Eva Löbau) after a mission didn't quite go as the young policeman had planned.
Image: SWR/Christian Koch
Lawyer Rainer Benzinger (August Zirner), whose stepson and colleague was shot dead, appears strangely composed at the scene of the crime.
Image: SWR/Patricia Neligan
Franziska Tobler (Eva Löbau) asks her father, ex-policeman Bruno (Michael Hanemann), for help. The elderly gentleman is in need of help himself - since he has been diagnosed with cancer.
Image: SWR/Christian Koch
Franziska Tobler (Eva Löbau) and Friedemann Berg (Hans-Jochen Wagner) can take a deep breath on Freiburg's green hills. The investigations into the milieu of people who can apparently buy their rights are frustrating - and make Berg in particular angry.
Image: SWR/Christian Koch
Rotten apples among the civil servants? In "Tatort: Ad Acta", Black Forest investigators Friedemann Berg (Hans-Jochen Wagner, pictured) and Franziska Tobler (Eva Löbau) found out that the bad guys can buy the state.
Image: SWR/Patricia Neligan
In "Tatort: Ad Acta", Franziska Tobler (Eva Löbau) and Friedemann Berg (Hans-Jochen Wagner) have to solve the murder of a young lawyer whose stepfather works primarily for the bad guys of this world.
Image: SWR/Patricia Neligan
Lawyer Rainer Benzinger (August Zirner, right) represents the client Sebastian Erhardt (Sascha Maaz), whom Berg also knows. Erhardt was - and is? - criminally active in the rocker milieu.
Image: SWR/Christian Koch
Nader Mansour (Hassan Akkouch), the dead man's husband, and Maki Benzinger (Akiko Hitomi, right), the victim's mother, cannot believe that lawyer Tobias Benzinger has been virtually executed.
Image: SWR/Patricia Neligan
Maki Benzinger (Akiko Hitomi), mother of the dead man, and his husband Nader Mansour (Hassan Akkouch), arrive at the crime scene in horror.
Image: SWR/Patricia Neligan
Assistant Andi Beuter (Daniel Friedl) has to be set up by Franziska Tobler (Eva Löbau) after a mission didn't quite go as the young policeman had planned.
Image: SWR/Christian Koch
Lawyer Rainer Benzinger (August Zirner), whose stepson and colleague was shot dead, appears strangely composed at the scene of the crime.
Image: SWR/Patricia Neligan
Franziska Tobler (Eva Löbau) asks her father, ex-policeman Bruno (Michael Hanemann), for help. The elderly gentleman is in need of help himself - since he has been diagnosed with cancer.
Image: SWR/Christian Koch
Franziska Tobler (Eva Löbau) and Friedemann Berg (Hans-Jochen Wagner) can take a deep breath on Freiburg's green hills. The investigations into the milieu of people who can apparently buy their rights are frustrating - and make Berg in particular angry.
Image: SWR/Christian Koch
Organized crime can afford the better lawyers and the judges are bribed for good measure. Are things really as corrupt in Switzerland as "Tatort: Ad Acta" showed?
No time? blue News summarizes for you
- Tatort: Ad Acta" was about corruption within the German judiciary.
- Detectives Franziska Tobler and Friedemann Berg had to deal with lawyers in the service of organized crime and bribed judges.
- In a ranking of the 180 least corrupt countries, Germany is in eighth place - just behind Switzerland.
In the 14th Black Forest "Tatort", things didn't look good for justice for a long time - and the judiciary also got its comeuppance. Only the courageous bending of the truth by the morally upright Freiburg investigators Franziska Tobler (Eva Löbau) and Friedemann Berg (Hans-Jochen Wagner) made it possible to achieve something like a fair ending after 90 minutes.
Are the laws, is the justice system, any good? In addition to this big question of the crime thriller, the Black Forest team, which has been investigating for seven years, also had a few private surprises - but these are anything but over. So it will be interesting to see what happens next.
What was it all about?
Star lawyer Rainer Benzinger (August Zirner), whose stepson and colleague Tobias Benzinger (Jan Liem) had been shot dead, appeared strangely composed at the crime scene. Was it the professional coolness he had learned? While Nader Mansour (Hassan Akkouch), the dead man's husband, and Maki Benzinger (Akiko Hitomi), the mother, mourned sincerely, Rainer Benzinger seemed to want to go back to business as usual. What kind of person is he?
We later learned that Benzinger mainly works for the bad guys of this world: The red-light district, organized crime - and he has an outstanding record of acquittals and lenient sentences. Could it be that young lawyer Tobias Benzinger wanted to get out of this dirty family business?
What was it really about?
How do you get to grips with evil? And aren't the good guys in this world on the defensive, even if the bourgeois crime thriller often tries to make us believe otherwise? The highly decorated screenwriter Bernd Lange ("Das Verschwinden"), who wrote the first Black Forest case ("Tatort: Goldbach") in 2017 and also came up with the investigator characters, tells a fictional story in 2024 that is not based on a true case.
Director Rudi Gaul describes the theme of the crime thriller as follows: "The moral question that this film raises touches on the dilemma of the extent to which the police can feel responsible for questions of justice at all. A problem that Tobler and Berg struggle with in this film. What I found interesting about Bernd Lange's book is that the investigators and the perpetrators ask themselves the same questions in a way: Is there a way to achieve justice? And: Is it permissible to break the law in order to achieve justice?"
How widespread is corruption in Switzerland?
The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), compiled by Transparency International, lists 180 countries surveyed according to the level of perceived corruption among public officials and politicians. The countries with the least corruption are placed at the top, while those with the most corruption are placed at the bottom.
Switzerland was ranked sixth in the evaluation for 2023, with Germany in eighth place. The countries with the lowest levels of corruption in the public sector ranked ahead of Switzerland were: the leader Denmark, followed by Finland, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore and Sweden.
Where did Franziska Tobler's father suddenly come from?
No, you haven't missed anything. Bruno Tobler's role as retired police commissioner and Franziska Tobler's father didn't exist before. But if the actor looks familiar to you: In "Murder with a View", Michael Hanemann (79) also played a retired police officer: Hans Zielonka, the former head of the Hengasch police station.
It is noticeable that after a longer "neutral" phase, the permanent singles Tobler and Berg now have more private storylines again. As a reminder: at the beginning, Tobler, then still with a partner, tried in vain to have a child. And in the wild Fastnacht film "Ich hab im Traum geweinet" (2020), the two investigators even ended up in bed together. But after that, they kept a low profile again.
Recently, Berg has been seen more and more often in his second job as a part-time farmer and in "Ad Acta" it was revealed that he had been counted out as a police officer - and may have been guilty of something in the past. And Tobler? He now lives with feelings of ambivalence when visiting his old, cancer-stricken father - who nevertheless tends to dominate. It will be interesting to see what happens next with Berg and the Toblers.
What will happen in the next Black Forest "Tatort"?
Tobler and Berg's next case will be shown in the first half of 2025. It is called "Tatort: Die grosse Angst", written and directed by Christina Ebelt ("Sterne über uns"). The movie takes place within 24 hours.
It tells the story of a death in a cable car gondola and a heavily pregnant woman (Pina Bergemann) who is suspected of having caused the death. Together with her husband (Benjamin Lillie), the suspect flees and wanders aimlessly through the forest. Franziska Tobler and Friedemann Berg are involved in the search for the couple and at the same time try to find out what is behind the story.
