In a GDR television series, Manfred Krug gave Robin Hood from the Ore Mountains a face. Now the ZDF uses the legend of the Wildschütz Karl Stülpner in the Saturday thriller.
Ehrenfriedersdorf – A partisan “judge Merciless” who bends the law in favor of his hunting companion. Polish workers who are being exploited. And an organic farmer struggling to survive on her farm.
In its fourth edition, the new ZDF Erzgebirgskrimi tells of injustices to which some feel powerless. That arouses longing for an avenger of the disenfranchised. The Ore Mountains can of course serve this purpose, as Karl Stülpner is said to have once taken the rich and given to the poor in Robin Hood fashion. “You need someone like Stülpner again,” muses the beekeeper played by Kai Schumann, who sees his bees exposed to the unrestrained use of poison by large farmers.
The legend is present in the region and known beyond Saxony from the GDR television series with Manfred Krug as Wildschütz Stülpner. In the thriller “The Last Bite” (Saturday, 8:15 pm, ZDF), she quickly wakes up when the judge is shot from the thicket with a historic muzzle-loading rifle from the high seat. The shooter puts a needle in his mouth like a hunter-like game – a custom to which the episode owes its title. Later, a stranger like the folk hero will bring money to the population at night.
The ZDF Saturday crime thriller from the Erzgebirge has so far reliably generated good ratings. And this time too, he has all the ingredients for an entertaining homeland thriller. Not only the rugged rocks of the Greifensteine including the natural stage provide idyllic pictures, where of course a play about Stülpner is being rehearsed. The legend also brings enough local color in front of the camera, so that this time there is no need for handicrafts from the Ore Mountains and traditional miners’ habits.
The story is well dosed with a bit of Saxon dialect and one or the other human dark side – even with those who initially come across as the good guys. The investigators Robert Winkler (Kai Scheve) and Karina Szabo (Lara Mandoki) have to grapple with the fact that the results of the investigation are made public.
The blonde forester (Teresa Weißbach) swings up to become deputy sheriff once more. While she remains hapless in love, in the end she herself ends up in Sagittarius’ sights. The scriptwriters Leo P. Ard (“A strong team”) and Rainer Jahreis (“SOKO Leipzig”) are obviously aware that they are sometimes annoying with their over-zeal.
In their script, of course, they use some clichés. The large farmer, who lives in the elegant manor house, came from the west after reunification, bought up the farms around him and doesn’t care about the environment or the employees. His “Grüß Gott!” Immediately reveals him as a foreign body. It is noteworthy that the often miserable living conditions of Eastern European workers in Germany are brought to mind at prime time. The episode was filmed last summer when massive corona outbreaks in the meat industry sparked a discussion about it.
A supply of crime fiction from the Ore Mountains is already guaranteed: the next episodes were filmed in the region this year. Then Commissioner Winkler’s coming to terms with the past should also provide further material. The investigation into his girlfriend’s accidental death had been closed many years ago under ominous circumstances.
The suspicion that this was not done with the right things is given new fodder in the current episode. And Winkler is combative. “You can’t cuddle in front of the powerful,” he says and toast with forester Saskia Bergelt and her father: “To Stülpner, Karl!” Dpa
