Updated on 02/15/2022 at 09:00
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- The new “crime scene” from the Black Forest tells of Sara Manzer, who is said to have killed her father.
- Johanna Wokalek shines in the leading role and is reminiscent of a classic by the writer Heinrich Böll.
- who is the actress And what is behind Section 111?
Who is Johanna Wokalek?
The convincing actress of Sara Manzer can feel completely at home in the Black Forest “crime scene”: Johanna Wokalek was born in Freiburg im Breisgau in 1975 and has received several awards. In 1998, while she was studying acting at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna, she got a role in Max Färberböck’s hit film “Aimee und Jaguar” as the maid Ilse.
Later she played at the Bonn Theater and the Burgtheater in Vienna, among others. Her television appearances include a starring role in the spy series Spy City (broadcast on ZDF in 2021). In the cinema she was seen, among other things, as RAF terrorist Gudrun Ensslin in Bernd Eichinger’s “Baader Meinhof Complex” (2008). Johanna Wokalek has been married to the conductor Thomas Hengelbrock since 2012. The couple has one son and lives in Paris and Hamburg.
Also read: How the RAF shaped Germany
“Tatort” from the Black Forest: Sara Manzer and the lost honor of Katharina Blum
In our review of “Sara’s Confession” we compared Sara Manzer’s portrayal by Johanna Wokalek with another famous woman damaged by prejudice: the title heroine in Heinrich Böll’s story “The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum” is a housekeeper who, because of her relationship with a criminal himself is mistakenly suspected of criminal offenses. The tabloid press exposes them to a merciless smear campaign, which also influences the investigators.
Heinrich Böll’s sensational work was a settlement with the Springer Presse (“Bild” newspaper), whose dubious reporting in the 1970s he also saw himself exposed to. She accused him of supporting the RAF (which also included Gudrun Ensslin).
In the 1975 film adaptation, Angela Winkler took on the title role, which made the hitherto unknown stage actress a star. Unlike Katharina Blum, who actually commits murder under the pressure and has to go to prison, “Sara’s Confession” leaves the guilt for her father’s death open and shows an optimistic ending.
What does Section 111 say?
An anonymous call to the police plays an important role in the investigation. It came from a phone with an unregistered prepaid card. The call could not be traced because, according to Commissioner Tobler, the holder of the card activated it “before paragraph 111 was changed”.
What is meant is a tightening of the Telecommunications Act. Paragraph 111 has only required buyers of prepaid cards to identify themselves with an “official identity document” (such as an identity card, passport or residence permit) since July 1, 2017. Previously, a prepaid card could theoretically be purchased completely anonymously.
The reason for the change was the federal government’s anti-terror package. Because mobile phone providers did not reliably collect or check their customers’ data beforehand, the investigation of criminal offenses “regularly came to nothing”, the Federal Ministry of the Interior explains in its justification: In information procedures by authorities, “masses of fictitious information (e.g. ‘Donald Duck’ as a connection owner) or misused identities (e.g. taken from the telephone book)”.
